Abstract: This paper critically examines the alliances between Arab regimes in Egypt, Morocco, UAE, Jordan, and Western powers through class analysis, drawing on economic data, political treaties, and historical events. It underscores how imperialist superstructures prop up these governments and how the ruling elite prioritize maintaining their control over aligning with the popular sentiment of their people, using both economic and military cooperation as tools of political survival.
Picture a large, aging dam holding back a river swollen with injustice, representing the populations of the collaborator Arab regimes. The ruling class maintains the dam, with imperial powers sending in their engineers as advisors. They patch cracks with superficial measures, such as symbolic support for Palestine. But the water behind it is fed by the unrelenting flow of inequality, economic exploitation, material deprivation, and repression. Just as the dam shows signs of strain under pressure, the regimes are vulnerable as public dissatisfaction rises. When the water rises too much, it does not ask permission to flood—it simply surges forward, unstoppable.
These cracks deepened in the 1990s when decolonial movements emphasizing indigenous and socialist struggles began to wane as the Soviet Union collapsed and the US became the world's undisputed superpower. After the collapse, the US sat at the helm of a new unipolar world and committed to ensuring it stayed that way.
The current geopolitical status quo is a direct product of the post-Cold War period, when the collapse of the Soviet Union left decolonial and socialist movements, such as Arab nationalism, without significant support. Without the backing of the Soviet Union, these movements weakened, and ruling elites aligned more closely with Western powers to maintain control.
On September 13th, 1993, under pressure from the United States, the Israeli regime and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), once an umbrella organization of Palestinian groups committed to establishing a free Palestine, signed the Oslo Accords, an agreement that saw the West Bank carved up into various enclaves, Israeli colonies on stolen Palestinian land made official, and a puppet Palestinian government established. The power imbalance between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators was evident from the start as the US threw its weight behind its proxy, Israel.
Israel went on to cement its power by jailing, exiling, or assassinating any potential Palestinian leader it deemed a threat. While the PLO represented Palestinians worldwide, the newly established Palestinian Authority (PA) came to nominally govern the West Bank and Gaza Strip but became yet another arm of colonialism solely committed to its own survival, one that has its security force and government salaries controlled by the very people it seeks to win its freedom from.
Arab regimes had little say in the Oslo Accords, but they nonetheless became intertwined with its fate. Understanding that the US held all the political cards, their leaders warmed up to Israel if they wanted any economic or military deal with the United States.
Israel is an imperialist and colonialist base on our land and is being used to stem the tide of revolution, to ensure our continued subjection, and to maintain the process of pillage and exploitation of our wealth and efforts.
Today, as Palestine reels from Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing campaign in the West Bank and the Nakab Desert, people are left questioning the role of regional powers – Where are the Arab leaders? Surely they are doing something to help Palestine?
The answer: The Arab leaders, like the PA, are precisely where Western imperial powers demand them to be–tied to foreign interests at the expense of their people’s outcry for justice.
Behind the facade of rhetorical support for the Palestinian cause, Arab regimes have forged alliances with Western imperial powers who help prop up the rule of the state’s bourgeoisie and the benefit of monopolizing production. In exchange for supporting US-dominated foreign policy, including normalization with Israel, Arab autocrats and the ruling class in Egypt, Morocco, the UAE, and Jordan prioritize consolidating their control through military and economic cooperation. This analysis highlights the fragility of the ruling class. It underscores how rising public discontent may eventually challenge their hold on power as betrayal of the Palestinian cause has further alienated their populations. This article explores how regimes in Egypt, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan highlight these dynamics and reveal intersections between political survival, class struggle, and the fight for a free Palestine.
Bourgeois Arab rulers are playing a dangerous game. Their citizens overwhelmingly support the Palestinian cause, yet their alliance with Washington ensures the longevity of their regimes. This contradiction is emblematic of what the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine described in 1969: Israel is an imperialist and colonialist base on our land and is being used to stem the tide of revolution, to ensure our continued subjection, and to maintain the process of pillage and exploitation of our wealth and efforts.
Military Consolidation and Power Dynamics
In the 1950s and 60s, Egypt was not only an ardent supporter of the Palestinian cause, but was widely seen as the vanguard of the Pan-Arab decolonial movement. But decades of imperial coercion coupled with billions in military financing have created a scenario in which the ruling elite prioritize their longevity over popular support for Palestine. Meanwhile, Egypt sharing a border with Israel provides a convenient excuse to build the largest military force in Africa.
Today, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) is the main force propping up the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and his government, one that holds a monopoly of force in the country, which is the government’s main tool for maintaining control. In 2023 alone, the U.S. government gave Egypt $1.2 billion in military financing compared to $16 million earmarked for economic growth.
Throughout history, ruling elites have centralized state infrastructure in places away from population centers to maintain dominance while mitigating the risks of popular revolutions.
The drive to shore up its armed forces and consolidate its government infrastructure goes beyond national defense; the Arab Spring exposed the vulnerability of these rulers to popular uprisings. Concerningly, according to Human Rights Watch, the U.S. is enabling Sisi’s regime by waiving human rights conditions on military aid. Once having to pass an annual human rights assessment, Egypt is no longer bound to such terms.
Throughout history, ruling elites have centralized state infrastructure in places away from population centers to maintain dominance while mitigating the risks of popular revolutions.
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is now constructing an entirely new capital miles away from Cairo.
Government buildings that were previously scattered across Cairo, have now been relocated to a newly built capital, deep in the desert, along with a massive new military headquarters – The Octagon, the largest military defense building in the world, dwarfing even the Pentagon. With costs of the new capital ballooning past $55 billion and poverty hovering around 30%, the Egyptian regime increasingly relies on foreign private investment from the U.S., UAE, and Europe to finance its ventures.
However, the patron-client relationship between the West and reactionary Arab regimes is not without disagreement. While Egypt aligns with Western powers, the Sisi government has shown some resistance to Israel's proposal of displacing Palestinians into the Sinai Desert. This demonstrates that despite their dependence on imperial powers, Arab elites still act independently when their immediate survival is at stake. The priority of Egypt’s ruling elite is to retain the privileges of its class above all else; a ballooning refugee population in the Sinai desert and urban areas would create a scenario in which resistance could organize against the government.
There have been examples of local Egyptians taking fate into their own hands, like Mohammed Salah, who killed three Israeli soldiers on the border. The many different resistance factions from Gaza could coalesce with local Egyptians who feel their government is complicit in the genocide and eventually create a destabilizing issue for the ruling party. This divergence highlights Egypt's fear of importing the conflict, which could destabilize the country further and exacerbate internal pressures from poverty and discontent.
Absorbing millions of Palestinian refugees from Gaza could be the straw that breaks the camel's back. This concern underscores how the interests of client states do not always align with those of their patrons.
The US superstructure supplies arms, and enriches those who could be an extension of its influence.
The Kingdom of Morocco, ruled by Mohammed VI, also underlines the use of military alliances to maintain regime stability. The regime recently allied with Israel in exchange for the U.S.’s recognition of its occupation of Western Sahara. According to the Arab Center for Research & Policy Studies, 88% of Moroccans rejected diplomatic recognition of Israel. Despite this, Morocco and Israel signed a bilateral defense treaty agreeing to shore up their military and cybersecurity apparatus. Additionally, in 2023, the regime agreed to open up two new Israeli weapons manufacturing plants owned by Elbit Systems.
In August 2024, the Kingdom entered into a $1 billion contract to purchase Israeli surveillance satellites. That same year, the Moroccan National Statistics Office reported that 82.5% of Moroccan families said their living standard had deteriorated in the last 12 months.
The US superstructure supplies arms, and enriches those who could be an extension of its influence.
Economic Dependency and Entrenchment of the Ruling Class
The United Arab Emirates’s (UAE) approach also highlights the meshing of economic strategy and political control. Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan has demonstrated his commitment to maintaining a strategic alliance with Israel even though the Washington Institute states that only a quarter of Emiratis supported the Abraham Accords, with support decreasing yearly.
In 2023, the UAE and Israel established the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, a multi-billion dollar joint economic and military venture. As the genocide in Gaza continues, the UAE has bypassed Yemen’s blockade of Israeli shipping by establishing a land route to Israel, ensuring their ventures continue undisturbed. At the same time, making sure to heavily publicize their delivery of aid trucks and airdrops into the besieged Gaza strip. In such an image-conscious country, the ruling class is increasingly viewed with contempt for supporting a genocidal regime. In a public opinion poll conducted by the Arab Center in Washington DC, 67% of Arabs in SouthWest Asia North Africa (SWANA) region stated that the UAE's position in the war was bad or very bad.
The UAE's relationship with imperialism differs from that of Morocco, Egypt, or Jordan. While the oil monarchies in the Arabian Gulf may not be as dependent on US aid as their North African and Jordanian counterparts, they still align themselves with Western empires by working together to bolster and benefit from American hegemony. The US-brokered India-Middle East-Economic Corridor (IMEC) establishes shipping routes from India through the UAE and Israel to Europe. The UAE is crucial in global shipping, serving as a transit hub from East to West and another bulwark against those who seek to challenge the world’s superpower.
Network of Collaborators
The Jordanian monarchy has a long history of sidelining the Palestinian cause; the first King of Jordan, Abdullah I bin Al-Hussein, secretly negotiated with the Jewish Agency for Israel, the operative branch of the World Zionist Organization, to annex Palestinian territories in the late 40s. Abdullah I bin Al-Hussein was assassinated in the 1950s, and his son, Hussain, took over. In the 70s, King Hussain flew to Tel Aviv to warn Golda Meir, the Israeli Prime Minister at the time, of an impending attack from Syria and Egypt. That same king was responsible for expelling thousands of Palestinian refugees, as well as the PLO, from Jordan following the events known as Black September.
A pattern of complicity has persisted throughout history and into the modern era.
Today, the divergence between the ruling and working classes is still evident. According to the Washington Institute, 84% of Jordanians oppose any cooperation with Israel. Despite this, trade with Israel continues unabated; according to Middle East Eye, Jordanian exports to Israel were $35.7m in May 2024, compared to $32.3m in May 2023. An increase of approximately 10%.
Jordan has regularly allowed its airspace to be used by the IDF and the U.S. The kingdom has gone as far as coming to the defense of Israel by shooting down Iranian rockets bound for Israeli targets, one of which was shot down on October 1st, 2024, and ended up injuring two Jordanians.
This tension is underscored by Jordan’s refugee population. Refugees make up nearly 33% of Jordan’s entire population, many of which are living examples of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Anera reports that Jordan hosts 3.3 million refugees, 2 million of whom are Palestinian. Moreover, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), nearly 50% of Jordanians have Palestinian ancestry.
Growing Public Discontent
But there is a growing rift between the ruling elites and their citizens. The elites of these regimes see their futures intertwined with that of Israel and the US. Policies, both internal and external, are aligning to continue the monopoly of production they have over the populations they rule. Yet, leaders portray themselves as being tough on Israel, condemning its genocidal tactics in front of media outlets and offering up symbolic gestures of support like airdrops and aid shipments into besieged Gaza. All while on the other hand, according to the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, providing intelligence, airspace, and material support to the Occupation. These symbolic actions only serve to mask the reality of exploitation and manipulation. They superficially support Palestine and temporarily appease the masses while strengthening their own positions through alliances with imperialist powers. They distract from the exploitation they suffer in a capitalist system that ties their leaders to Western interests.
Across the SWANA region, the disparity between the ruling elite and the working class is apparent. According to Oxfam, the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis nearly doubled the wealth of the SWANA region’s ultra-rich between 2019 and 2022. The top 0.05% saw their wealth increase by 75%, from $1.6 trillion to $3 trillion. Meanwhile, public debt surged. In Egypt, that debt rose from 70% to 90%, and from 45% to 69% in Morocco.
While the top earners in each country control most of their nation’s wealth, the prospects of the working class continue to stagnate, facing fewer job opportunities and rising hunger. According to the World Inequality Database, in 2022, the top 1% in the SWANA region controlled 45% of the region’s wealth, while the bottom 50% controlled 1%. As Arab leaders and the ruling elite continue to enrich themselves, the future for the working-class people of Egypt, Morocco, UAE, and Jordan is a dark one.
But these regimes are also far more fragile than they appear. Lack of job prospects were a significant catalyst for the Arab Spring, and the International Labor Organization says, while lower than the pre-pandemic rate, the youth unemployment rate in the SWANA region, at 24.4% in 2023, is almost double the global average. Furthermore, adding to an already volatile situation, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Egyptian inflation rose from 24% in 2023 to 33% in 2024.
Potential for Uprisings and New Status Quo
The alliances with Western imperial powers and the ruling class have not improved the material conditions of the working class. In the book, The Unmaking of Arab Socialism, Ali Kadri argues that the dismantling of socialist structures that once benefitted the region’s poorest and most vulnerable served to increase tensions and social unrest. Economic redistribution and social support mechanisms were replaced by international actors that pushed countries to pursue neoliberal policies. Western loans often came with conditions requiring privatization and reduced government intervention, which increased economic dependence on Western powers.
The Palestinian cause is a popular resistance movement linking the working class to a broader struggle for liberation, not just against foreign powers but also against domestic oppression.
The live-streamed daily horrors of the genocide in Gaza threaten to uproot years of entrenchment by the ruling class. The masses see the writing on the wall; their Palestinian siblings are being eradicated, their taxes are lining the pockets of their rulers, and their own buying power is shrinking. Material deprivation pushes people toward resistance. As ruling elites pursue Western-backed projects and privatization policies that strip resources from public welfare, these conditions lay the groundwork for potential uprisings.
Egyptians are increasingly taking to the streets and facing mass arrests for chanting Palestinian slogans at football games. Moroccans are regularly protesting in support of the Palestinian people in Casablanca, and dock workers in Tangier have refused to unload military shipments destined for Israel. Jordanians are now firing on Israeli soldiers at the border and the Israeli embassy in Amman.
The divide between those with ultimate power committed to holding on to it at any cost and everyday workers will eventually lead to a massive clash. The working-class people of the SWANA region are reaching levels of economic destitution that are untenable in the long term. The Palestinian cause is a popular resistance movement linking the working class to a broader struggle for liberation, not just against foreign powers but also against domestic oppression. The fight for Palestinian freedom is inseparable from the fight of the region's working class.
As history has shown with the case of Apartheid South Africa, the people, regardless of distance and seemingly insurmountable hurdles, cannot be stopped when pushed to the brink. The dam is beginning to crack.
The people are compelled to resist when they are deprived of basic necessities, when the very institutions designed to work for them no longer do, and when their leaders prioritize profit and imperial alliances over humanity, class conflict becomes inevitable. However, toppling the ruling class requires more than just the will but the means to identify the structures sustaining the status quo.
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