israel-palestine conflict

ACCEPTED finally by both Hamas and Israel, the ceasefire in Gaza is the effective outcome of the US administration’s maximum pressure on Hamas and its embrace of the positions of several Arab states, particularly Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey.

But the end of hostilities represents barely the first of the three phases presumably proceeding from ceasefire in Gaza to peace in the Middle East. The devil is in the details, and the hardest talks loom ahead.

Here’s why: the complicated, multi-phase plan is riddled with caveats because the old U.S. approach to the Middle East is crumbling.

America’s military hegemony

Since 1945, the U.S. hegemony in the Middle East has relied on oil buys, weapons sales, and regime change. In diplomacy, Washington has favored bilateral peace treaties between Israel and Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994) and the Oslo Accords with the Palestinian Authority (1993-95).

Since his first administration, President Trump has built on the Abraham Accords (2020-21), a series of bilateral agreements to normalize relations among Israel and several Arab states, led by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain. With massive oil buys from and arms sales to Riyadh, the U.S. goal is to have Saudi Arabia join the Accords.

But arms sales are the key to America’s hegemony. In the case of its allies, the U.S. provides 60 to 80 percent of their lethal imports (Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia). In the rest, it accounts for 50 to 60 percent of the total (UAE, Iraq, Qatar), followed by Egypt.

Additionally, American hegemony relies on aid dependency. Between 1946 and 2023, Washington provided a whopping $373 billion in foreign assistance to the Middle East. Before the Gaza catastrophe, the bulk of the aid was steered to just a few countries: Israel ($139 billion), Egypt ($83-B), Iraq ($70-B), and Jordan ($24-B).

Since the Middle East is the largest regional recipient of U.S. aid, the impact should be reflected in increasing security and rising per capita income. Yet, the net effect has been precisely the reverse, as evidenced by the region’s “forever conflicts” and periods of historical economic stagnation.

Extensive periods of stagnating living standards

Worse, the military symbiosis between the U.S. and Israel has triggered huge adverse spillovers to adjacent Arab states. These severe destabilizations have been accompanied by lost years, even decades, with no increase in per capita incomes in these states.

Egypt coped with such stagnation in 1965-75 and again in the early 2010s. Jordan lost a decade after the 1967 Six-Day War, during the first Palestinian uprising in the 1980s, and again in the early 2010s. Even Israel hasn’t been immune to stagnation periods, as evidenced by past economic crises, the highest income polarization among OECD countries, and the huge cost-of-living protests after the failure of the peace process.

In Iran and Iraq, adversities have escalated since their 1980-88 war, in which the U.S. supplied arms to both sides. In Iraq, where the U.S. had backed the 1963 coup, per capita income in 2010 was where it had first been in 1978, over three decades before. In Iran, which suffered the first U.S.-UK regime change in 1953, U.S. sanctions prevented gains in per capita income for a quarter of a century after the Islamic Revolution and again in the 2010s.

Following the 1949 U.S.-led regime change, Syria’s democratic path was undermined until 2025. As a result, Syrian per capita income before October 7, 2023, is where it was last in 1981; that is, 44 years ago. In Palestine, per capita income is now where it was in the early 1970s, half a century ago. And in Yemen, per capita income is where it was 55 years ago.

China-led development

In the past decade, China has emerged as a credible and peaceful intermediary in the Middle East. In addition to investing significantly in countries burdened by decades of U.S. interference and regime change, Beijing has achieved several diplomatic coups.

Major regional Arab states, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, build on the China-led Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Saudi Arabia has joined the BRICS alliance, remains one of China’s largest oil suppliers, and is selling oil in multiple currencies. For decades, U.S. administrations fostered divides between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Yet, in March 2023, these two countries resumed relations after a China-brokered deal.

In July 2024, China played a vital role in fostering Palestinian national unity in the Beijing Declaration, signed by 14 different Palestinian factions.

In August 2024, Beijing established a Second Silk Road in the region. In July 2025, China and Egypt expanded their bilateral cooperation across various economic sectors.

For years, China has called for and worked for de-escalation, sustained peace, and development in the region.

Surely the Middle East is large enough for both great powers – as long as the presence of each is predicated on diplomacy and peacemaking rather than abject obliteration.

Catastrophic economic and human costs

Since 1945, Washington has relied on destabilization and regime change in the Middle East to maintain its hegemony in the region. The post-9/11 wars alone have cost over $8 trillion and the lives of more than 1 million people.

In the past, US military aid to Israel amounted to $3.8 billion per year; since October 7, 2023, it has soared to $22 billion. In Gaza and Yemen, it has made the US complicit in genocidal atrocities.

In 2023-25, a quarter of a million Palestinians — mainly women and children — have been killed or wounded in Gaza, while more than 5.3 million people in the region have been displaced in Israel’s post-October 7 atrocities.

These catastrophic performances can be compared and contrasted with Chinese initiatives focusing on de-escalation and stabilization, particularly on investment, development, and modernization, which are hugely attractive in the Middle East.

The region has lost decades in self-defeating wars that have benefited primarily global defense contractors in the West. The time for decisive economic development, led by China and the Global South, has arrived, also in the Middle East.

Obliteration wars are no solution to 21st-century challenges.

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The author of The Obliteration Doctrine (2025) and The Fall of Israel (2024), Dr Dan Steinbock, a strategist of the multipolar world, is the founder of Difference Group and has served at the India, China, and America Institute (US), Shanghai Institute for International Studies (China), and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see https://www.differencegroup.net/

AS EVIDENCED by complicity in the Gaza genocide, the US-Israel military symbiosis in the Middle East is increasingly shunned by the international community. What the region needs is aggressive economic development.

Recently, a high-level UN conference urged Israel to commit to a Palestinian state and gave “unwavering support” to a two-state solution. The “New York Declaration” set out a phased plan to end the eight-decade conflict and the ongoing Gaza catastrophe.

Co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, the EU, the Arab League, and 15 countries, the conference envisioned an independent, demilitarized Palestine living side by side peacefully with Israel, and their eventual integration into the broader Middle East.

Last week, China joined the New York Declaration. As foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun stated, “We support all efforts that are conducive to the political settlement of the question…, and the ultimate, comprehensive, just and lasting resolution of the Palestinian question.”

Palestine and, thereby, the broader Middle East are now at a critical inflection point. For decades, US efforts at “normalization” have unleashed ever-greater devastation in the region, which is crying for a peaceful development scenario, championed by China and the largest economies of the Global South.

America’s effective Middle East strategy

The Biden administration’s Middle East plan – the “grand bargain” – was built on the first Trump administration’s Abraham Accords, which were preceded by Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994) and the Oslo Accords with the Palestinian Authority (1993–95). These accords are premised on Arab-Israeli normalization, particularly between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain. With the US as the behind-the-façade architect, deals with Morocco and Sudan were announced between September 2020 and January 2021, respectively. The grand bargain was premised on the marginalization of Chinese trade and investment presence in the Middle East – and on the sidelining of the Palestinians.

Yet, ever since the Gaza hostilities, Israel’s relentless bombing and Biden’s support of Netanyahu’s war cabinet, the talks have stalled as bilateral trust between Israel and the Gulf states has eroded. In a sense, this is the logical effect of America’s effective Middle East strategy, as opposed to its rhetorical diplomatic stance. After all, the real money is not in peace talks, but in arms sales.

America is the supplier of all major military powers in the Middle East. In the case of its closest allies, the US provides 60 to 80 percent of their lethal imports (Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia). In the rest, it accounts for 50 to 60 percent of the total (UAE, Iraq, Qatar), followed by Egypt (34%), whose primary suppliers are mainly America’s NATO allies (Germany, Italy), as well as Russia.

US Arms Sales in the Middle East

Estimated military value of arms imports. These countries include the largest recipients of US arms sales in the Middle East

Source: SIPRI

The steady, progressive flow of arms into the troubled region has been the primary contributor to its geopolitical volatility and economic uncertainty, particularly in light of the military symbiosis between the US and Israel.

In the context of Israel facing ICJ and ICC charges related to genocide, such arms transfers would seem to violate customary international law, including the International Law Commission’s Draft Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, and International Humanitarian Law, including Common Article 1 to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949.

Obviously, both the US and Israel have rejected all such charges. Instead, Washington has aggressively sanctioned the ICC and its prosecutorial authorities.

China’s BRI stance in the Middle East

In the past decade or so, China has emerged as a credible and peaceful intermediary among the different stakeholders in the Middle East. In addition to investing significantly in countries in which the US is known and notorious for its military aid and regime change operations, Beijing has achieved several diplomatic coups.

For decades, US administrations fostered a divide between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the Sunni and Shia leaders of Middle East geopolitics. Yet, in March 2023, these two countries announced the resumption of bilateral relations, after a deal brokered by China. After decades of US-led sanctions, Iran hoped to focus on economic development, whereas Riyadh was intent on realizing the Saudi Vision 2030 of a more diversified, less oil-reliant economy.

In July 2024, China played a vital role in fostering Palestinian national unity in what became known as the Beijing Declaration, signed by 14 different Palestinian factions, most prominently by Fatah and Hamas. In the subsequent weeks, Israel, supported by US arms and military financing, intensified its assassination campaign against these Palestinian leaders, which also led to the recent attack in Doha.

In 2015, years of challenging talks resulted in a nuclear deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA) between Iran, the U.S., and a set of world powers. Despite Iran’s adherence to it, the Trump administration pulled the U.S. out of the deal in 2018. In the White House, regime change in Iran remains tempting, due to Tehran’s huge regional economic and geopolitical importance.

China has exclusive rights to several Iranian oil and natural gas fields. As part of a 2016-2017 agreement, some Chinese military leaders argued Beijing would regard a foreign attack on these areas as an attack on its own sovereign territory. Two years later, Iran joined China’s Belt and Road (BRI) initiative. In March 2021, the countries signed a 25-year and $400-billion strategic cooperation agreement. (Despite these deals, Israel attacked Iran in 2024 while the US bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025.)

In August 2024, Beijing sent an even stronger signal about its commitment by establishing a Second Silk Road in the region. It ensued after major Chinese investments in Saudi Arabian stocks and the signing of MOUs worth $50 billion with six major Chinese financial institutions. And in July 2025, China and Egypt expanded their bilateral cooperation across various economic sectors.

The progressive rise of China’s economic presence in the Middle East remains a matter of great concern in Washington.

The militarization of US foreign policy

Yet, the real problem is not Gaza, Iran, or China, but the gross militarization of US foreign policy. In September 2012, Karl W. Eikenberry, former U.S. ambassador to and commanding general of Afghanistan, warned that in the past 50 years American foreign policy has become “excessively reliant on military power.” Supported by its global military web, the U.S. has been in war, engaged in combat, or has otherwise employed its forces in foreign countries in all but 11 years of its existence.

Since the establishment of the first US bases in Israel in the late 2010s, Israel’s military actions have escalated dramatically, as evidenced by the Gaza catastrophe, the attendant attacks in neighboring Arab states, such as Lebanon and Syria, and even further in Iran and Yemen, and most recently in Qatar – a key US ally in the region.

Since 1945, Washington has relied on a dark record of regime change and destabilization in the Middle East. The post-9/11 wars alone have cost over $8 trillion and the lives of more than 1 million people, whereas in Gaza the US is complicit to genocidal atrocities, due to its massive military aid and financing of hostilities. This disastrous performance is driving a rethink in the Trump White House where Pentagon officials, headed by Elbridge Colby, are reportedly proposing the department prioritize protecting the homeland and Western Hemisphere, a striking reversal from the military’s focus on the “China threat” – and one that Washington’s neoconservatives won’t easily accept.

Yet, the simple truth is that the era of US destabilization policies is over in the Middle East. The time for aggressive economic development, led by China and the Global South, has arrived.

Obliteration wars are no solution to 21st-century challenges.

The author of The Fall of Israel (2024) and The Obliteration Doctrine (2025), Dr Dan Steinbock, a renowned visionary of the multipolar world, is the founder of Difference Group and has served at the India, China and America Institute (US), Shanghai Institute for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, seehttps://www.differencegroup.net/

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