Whose War: Rethinking the Priorities of the Muslim World..

One of the deepest contradictions in the contemporary Muslim world is the willingness of some Muslim-majority states to confront fellow Muslims while maintaining accommodation with Israel and strategic dependence on the United States.

For years, enormous military, financial and political resources have been directed towards conflicts involving Yemen, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestinian resistance movements.

Yet the same states have often failed to mobilise comparable power against the occupation of Palestine.

This raises a fundamental question:

● How did fellow Muslims become easier targets than the power occupying Palestinian land?

Yemen offers a particularly striking example; despite years of war, blockade and devastating humanitarian consequences, Yemen has continued to present itself as a supporter of the Palestinian cause, including through actions linked to the war in Gaza.

Whatever one’s position on these actions, the contrast is difficult to ignore: a country suffering severe economic and humanitarian pressures has nevertheless placed Palestine at the centre of its regional posture, while wealthier Arab states have generally relied more heavily on diplomacy and political restraint.

The same contradiction appears in the treatment of Iran and regional resistance movements.

Instead of building a regional framework based on dialogue among neighbouring societies, political and military alliances have increasingly divided the region into competing camps.

Such alignments risk turning the Muslim world against itself while leaving the underlying question of Palestine unresolved.

History should also provide a warning: the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and the subsequent destruction of Iraq demonstrated how regional conflicts can become traps whose consequences outlast the governments that initiate them.

External powers may encourage confrontation when it serves their strategic interests, but regional societies ultimately bear the human and economic costs.

The essential question, therefore, is one of priorities:

● If hundreds of thousands of soldiers, vast military arsenals and enormous financial resources can be mobilised against neighbouring Muslim countries, why can they not be mobilised to defend Palestinian rights and challenge occupation?

Regional reconciliation should not mean abandoning Palestine!

Rather, ending intra-Muslim conflict could create the political space necessary to confront the region’s unresolved central injustice:

The continued occupation and dispossession of Palestinians!

The Muslim world does not need more wars among its own peoples.

It needs solidarity, independence, and the courage to reconsider whose interests its conflicts ultimately serve!!