The Middle-East, as with other parts of the global economy, requires a large single market, in order that capital operating in the region can produce on the same scale as the capital that operates in North America, Western Europe an so on. The ruling class, and its dominant faction, based in the US, along with its states, seeks that as a location for its speculative activities, obtaining revenues and capital gains without equivalent capital investment. The increasing influence of China, in that region, especially when combined with China's growing alliance with Russia, which has historic links into the area, as well as with Türkiye, and the Balkans, poses a global strategic threat to US imperialism, and its European subordinates, given the region's control of huge oil reserves, as well as control over the Suez Canal. The latter was enough for a declining British and French imperialism to go to war with Egypt in 1956.
To counter that, the US and its European subordinates had been seeking to achieve a normalisation of relations between Israel and the surrounding Arab states in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the other Gulf states, all of whom, currently are clients of the West, but that being a situation that could change with growing Chinese influence. In the 1980's, as the USSR was in terminal decline, Saudi Arabia assisted the US in hastening its demise by increasing the supply of oil, driving its global price down, and so undermining Russian oil revenues. It has been notable that, in the current climate, Saudi Arabia has resisted any similar moves, despite huge US arms sales to it, and has cooperated with Russia in OPEC+ to curtail oil supplies, and keep prices up.
A normalisation of relations between Israel, and these surrounding Arab states, would be the basis of a new politico-economic bloc, and creation of a large, single market. The existing influence of the US, UK and EU in that region would be a powerful force in securing the region in the sphere of western imperialism, against the encroachment of China and BRICS+, to which Saudi Arabia has already been admitted. The ruling class might have had globalisation frustrated, but, its western component could, at least, look to an opening of borders, in this region, and a securing of its own interests, for increased profits, and out of which increased payments of interest/dividends, and so a basis for its asset prices being sustained.
But, the genocide being committed, for all the world to see, by the Zionist state in Gaza, makes that currently impossible. Its not that the ruling class in these states does not want to normalise relations despite that genocide, but that, its own masses would be led into revolt were it to do so. Those states have done nothing to assist the Palestinians, and, when the Houthis, in Yemen, have taken action, in line with the provisional ICJ ruling, to deny supplies to the Zionist state, those states have been complicit in NATO's military actions against them. When Iran sent missiles into Israel, in response to the Zionist state's attack on the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, the Arab states supported NATO's actions in shooting down those missiles.
The current genocide shows that the Two State Solution was no solution at all. The UN General Council voted overwhelmingly to recognise the reality that Palestine is a state. But, the US, the main proponent of two states, on paper, voted against it, and Britain abstained. The reality is, of course, that, even if the US, Britain and every other country had voted to recognise a Palestinian state it would have made no difference. It is mere formalism. Would the Zionist state have stopped bombing Gaza, invading and occupying the West Bank, and so on? Of course, not, any more than the fact that Syria is a state, and yet, is occupied, in the Golan Heights, or that Iran and Iraq are states, and yet are attacked. Ukraine is a state, but that hasn't stopped Russia attacking it, and occupying parts of Eastern Ukraine!
A continuation of the delusion of two states, would simply mean that the gradual extermination of the Palestinians by Zionism, going on for over 75 years, would drag on, with sporadic clashes like that which erupted after October 7th, and would continually get in the way of the normalisation of relations. For Zionism, and so, also, for its US and EU sponsors, it needs a final solution to the problem, much as with the eradication of the Native Americans, or Australasian aborigines by European settlers. That is what Zionism is doing in Gaza. Once the Palestinians have been wiped out, or reduced to such numbers as can be contained in reservations, incapable of any kind of resistance, then the Zionist state can resume the normalisation of relations with the surrounding Arab states, and the process of creating that wider economic bloc undertaken.
US and European imperialism is not going to stand in the way of that, even if the ICJ rules that a genocide has been committed, a genocide we all know has been, and is being committed. Owen Jones, is correct that the size of this genocide, and its blatant nature cannot be hidden, and yet, the western media and politicians are attempting to hide it, and all opposition to it, in western countries is being savagely attacked. But Owen Jones is wrong in thinking that this means that Zionism/Imperialism has lost. Once normalisation of relations is established, the current protests at the genocide will eventually subside. The fact that, we are going to see continued protest at that genocide, at the same time that western governments continue to support it, arm it and act as attorney for it, means that those states will resort to ever more Bonapartist methods to oppose it. The sham that is bourgeois-democracy will continue to crumble as it defends its genocide, but without the working-class overthrowing capitalism, and that bourgeois democracy, it will itself stabilise and continue.
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