A Job for the Arab League: Help Dislodge Hamas

Or: A surreal encounter with Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa

Interviewing Amr Moussa at Lake Como, Italy

In 2011, I hosted Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa on a thinktank panel in Italy, on the glorious shores of Lake Como. I ambushed him with the UN Human Development Report for the Arab world of some years before, showing the region near the bottom of the table on almost every measure of progress, from translations to scientific publications to women’s labor participation. Surely, I concluded, these were home-grown problems that one couldn’t blame on Israel.

“Absolutely, absolutely,” replied the former Egyptian foreign minister in his mellifluent way. “But you know, we will never have progress in this region, true progress, until we solve the question of Palestine.” This made no sense; but he spoke with such conviction and eloquence that one might think it did (for more, see my AP interview).

I was reminded of this over the weekend as the Israeli hostage and Palestinian prisoner releases were taking place, the Arab League met in Cairo and issued a statement reaffirming support for the Palestinian cause. The foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and the Palestinian Authority stood united in rejecting U.S. President Donald Trump’s musings about Palestinians being relocated from Gaza to neighboring countries, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi insisted that Palestinian statehood is essential for peace.

All of that was quite predictable and, as usual with this umbrella group for a disunited and dysfunctional region, not particularly useful of impactful. But if the Cairo-based organization wants to actually help the Palestinians, now is the moment for a difficult-but-achievable task of freeing the Palestinians of Hamas. Words of support are meaningless without a strategy for what comes after the devastating war sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7 invasion and massacre.

The current ceasefire in Gaza, if fully implemented, will see Israel withdraw and end the war in exchange for the release of its hostages. Implicit in this arrangement is that Hamas, however degraded and wounded, remains in control there. That’s not something Israel can easily accept, that will lead to stability or that will enable progress and prosperity for the Palestinians.