DUBAI (IPS) – As Israel’s assault on Gaza continues into a third week, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries remain distressed on two fronts — mounting Arab anger over Palestinian causalities and concern over Tehran and Tel Aviv using Hamas to settle their differences.

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah (R) welcomes Emir of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani upon his arrival at Riyadh airport January 15, 2009. REUTERS/Saudi Press Agency-Handout

The GCC bloc — comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman and the United Arab Emirates — has criticized Israeli actions as racist and appealed to the international community to respond decisively to stop a catastrophe.
But beyond offering aid and empathizing with the Palestinians, the GCC has, despite its best efforts, had no diplomatic success in ensuring a ceasefire.

The Palestinian-Israeli issue is not only important to the GCC for its political context, but also for the raw nerve it touches among its own people because of the existence of a large population of Palestinian expatriates in the six countries.

Several pro-Palestinian mass demonstrations have been held in the GCC countries since the attacks began during the last week of 2008.

Such gatherings are rare in the region and loaded with potential political consequences given the gap between the public’s support for those defying Israel and the United States on the one hand and the governments’ affinity with the latter for security reasons on the other. “Israel has placed all the Gulf states on the defensive, and of all of them, Qatar feels the most pressured because of its relations with Tel Aviv,” Mehran Kamrava, Director of the Center for International and Regional Studies at Georgetown University campus in Doha, told IPS, referring to the energy-rich state’s political contacts with Israel.

Qatar also hosts an Israeli commercial interests office.

In his Friday sermon on Jan.9, Qatar-based Egyptian Islamic scholar Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qaradawi warned Arab leaders against “losing legitimacy if they kept turning a deaf ear to the voice of their peoples,” while renewing his call for a boycott of Israeli and U.S. goods.

On another front, Israel and the U.S. have led an incessant campaign to label Hamas, or Islamic Resistance Movement, as a proxy of Iran, without giving it due credit as a legitimate Palestinian resistance movement that won elections credibly in 2006.

This denial of legitimacy has resulted in an influential section of the international community shunning Hamas on the grounds of not being ready to recognize the existence of Israel.

While Israel’s Gaza action is seen as being motivated by the need to restore deterrence and public confidence ahead of elections, especially in the wake of the Lebanese war debacle in 2006, it ironically fits in well with the GCC’s strategic need to check recent gains by Iran.

These gains include continuation of its nuclear program, Iran-backed Hizbullah’s surprising resistance against Israel and U.S. President-elect Barack Obama’s intention to negotiate with Iran, reversing 30 years of estrangement.

Though the GCC has refrained from publicly criticizing Iran for its alleged role in Gaza, it is definitely worried about Shi’a Iran’s increasing influence and attempts to become the undisputed regional superpower.

According to Prof. Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, “Hamas is controversial. It has been difficult to decide how to deal with it. Though it was legitimately elected, it seized power in Gaza and considers itself a bigger and stronger radical power with the backing of Iran and is considered a pawn in Iran’s hands. So curtailing Hamas could be considered akin to curtailing Iran.”

However, the UAE University academic told IPS that “the sincerity of the GCC can never be questioned. Several efforts are underway and every GCC state is trying its best to put an end to this senseless massacre.”

According to Abdulla the Palestine question ”is not a political one but an issue of ‘principle’.. Palestinians deserve a just and comprehensive state and have been grossly mistreated for the past 60 years.”

Shi’a Iran’s support for Hamas assumes significance because it is a Sunni entity. Although several predominantly Sunni GCC countries, chiefly Saudi Arabia, support Hamas financially, Iran is seen as an important resource as well.

While Saudis reportedly transferred nearly 100 million U.S. dollars in aid to the Hamas-led government in 2006, making it the chief funding agent in the entire Arab world, Iran’s support for Palestinians in general, and Hamas in particular, has grown since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad assumed power in August 2005.

Arab League chief Amr Moussa attends a finance meeting in Kuwait January 14, 2009. The Arab League said on Wednesday there was no quorum to convene an Arab summit in Qatar this week on Israel’s offensive in Gaza, which has led to a tug-of-war splitting the Arab world into two camps. REUTERS/Stephanie McGehee

As the U.S. and Europe withheld funding to the Hamas-led government in 2006, Iran is reported to have given 120 million U.S. dollars to Hamas during the first year following its victory in the Palestinian legislative elections. In June 2007, Ali Larijani, then chairman of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, admitted Iran was funnelling finances, but denied providing arms to the Islamic group.
Complicating matters for the Arab countries, however, is their failure to reach a consensus on even a summit to discuss ways of easing the situation. The Arab League warned that it was not possible to help until Hamas returned to national unity talks with its rival Fatah.

While it is unlikely that even Arab consensus would have the desired impact on Israel, the events of the last 20 days certainly heighten the region’s security concerns.

Moreover, with calls such as those by al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden — who accused Arab leaders of collusion with Israel in an audio tape issued on Wednesday — it could feed extremism and further inflame anti-Americanism, especially at a time when the Gulf Arabs were euphoric about Obama’s election and optimistic about healing the wounds attributed to the Bush administration by the Arab world.