Palestinians are still worried about the hashtag "Palestine is not my cause"

When the announcement about normalization between Israel and the UAE went public in 2020, some prominent Arab commentators in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere started to publicly denounce the Palestinian leadership with the slogan "Palestine is not my cause." 

It became a popular hashtag. The phrase keeps popping up in op-eds, such as this one during the May Gaza war.

Today, there is an op-ed by Dr. Mustafa Youssef Al-Ledawi in Palestine Today who claims that the phrase represents only a tiny minority, but it must be fought against. It clearly has made serious inroads in Arab thinking.

Al-Ledawi summarizes how things have changed in the Arab world and their complaints against Palestinians:

We must admit that the climate has changed, and that the policies that prevailed in the past have changed, and the Palestinian issue has become for most Arab and Islamic regimes their last concern, and least concern. Some Arab regimes have portrayed the Palestinians saying that they are the danger [to the Arab world], and that it is their actions that have harmed them and caused them to perish, and that it drained their resources and hindered their abilities, and describes them as rogues, corrupt, liars, hypocrites, unfaithful stalkers, turning against those who stood with them, biting the hand that fed them, and denying those who supported them, and thus they do not deserve sympathy.

Ledawi contradicts himself several times, claiming both that these are fringe opinions but then saying that Arab media is controlled by those who hold them, which is absurd. He also doesn't even attempt to answer the Arab criticisms of the Palestinians - that they side with Iran, that they remain divided, that the money that has poured into them from the Arab world has been wasted on corruption and infighting, that they have spurned peace offer after peace offer. 

Despite his trying to downplay the issue, it is clearly a major concern for Palestinian leadership who have seen donations from Arab states dry up in recent years. 

---

---