Quoting a veteran reporter and analyst of Middle East events, Ali Younes, CNN further described the Israeli war on the Palestinian territory as “unprecedented in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict.”
"Most Arab states are actively supporting Israel against the Palestinians -- and not even shy about it or doing it discreetly," said Younes in a Sunday news program.
He went on to describe the massive military operation on Gaza as a "joint Arab-Israeli war consisting of Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia against other Arabs -- the Palestinians as represented by Hamas.”
One of the outcomes of the fighting will likely be "the end of the old Arab alliance system that has, even nominally, supported the Palestinians and their goal of establishing a Palestinian state," the analyst added.
For his part, Danielle Pletka, vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at the pro-Israeli US think tank The American Enterprise Institute, said that the “Israel-Hamas conflict has laid bare the new divides of the Middle East.”
"It's no longer the Muslims against the Jews. Now it's the extremists -- the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, and their backers Iran, Qatar and Turkey -- against Israel and the more moderate Muslims including Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia," Pletka further claimed.
"It's a proxy war for control or dominance in the Middle East," said CNN's Fareed Zakaria.
The American network then added another pro-Israeli ‘analyst,’ Eric Trager, who tied the Hams resistance movement to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and said, "The Muslim Brotherhood is international, with affiliated groups in more than 70 countries, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE."
Trager, who works for a US-based Israeli interest group called The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, further added, "Israel's ongoing battle against Hamas is part of a wider regional war on the Muslim Brotherhood."
"Most Arab states share Israel's determination to finish the movement off once and for all, but they are unlikely to be successful," he claimed.
"From the perspective of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE and some other Arab states, what the Israeli Prime Minister is doing is fighting this war against Hamas on their behalf so they can finish the last stronghold of the Muslim Brotherhood," Younes noted later in the program.
Referring to Egypt as a “regime that came to power by toppling a Muslim Brotherhood government," Trager then said, "It's therefore in an existential conflict with the Brotherhood. So it doesn't want to see Hamas, the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, emerge stronger in a neighboring territory."
The participants in the CNN news show then discussed the position of other US-backed Arab regime in region on the Zionist aggression against Gaza and agreed that monarchies of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan have called on Hamas to accept the ceasefire offer proposed by anti-Hamas Egyptian regime.
Countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE are "challenged by Islamists who come to power via the ballot box rather than through royal succession," said Trager.
"So these countries have been directly supportive of the [military] coup in Egypt (against the ousted president Mohamed Morsi) because it removed elected Islamists and therefore discredited that model."
Saudi Arabia is "leading the charge," partly through backing the coup and financing state media reports that attacked the brotherhood, Younes stated.
"Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE all see the destruction of Hamas as of benefit to their internal security as well as to regional stability."
"The Saudis and the Egyptians are now more scared of Islamic fundamentalism than they are of Israel," Zakaria pointed out.
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