Last week, Queen Rania of Jordan—a country largely dependent on Israel for its national security—gave a sickening interview with the highly sympathetic Christiane Amanpour of CNN. Yet her opinions are not necessarily typical of thinking in Arab capitals. Ghaith al-Omari, writing shortly after Hamas’s attack on Israel, provides some crucial analysis:

Like the rest of the world, Arab governments were caught off guard by the unprecedented scale and brutality of Hamas’s attack. They shared Israel’s assumption that Hamas was not currently interested in a major escalation but was instead busy with the demands of governing Gaza and deterred by Israel’s carrots and sticks.

Consider Israel’s close neighbors, Egypt and Jordan, both of which reacted cautiously in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Egyptian officials refrained from condemning Hamas, called for de-escalation, and criticized Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. Jordan reacted similarly, expressing support for the Palestinian cause. . . .

In fact, Israel’s offensive against Gaza has already provoked unrest in both countries: an Egyptian policeman murdered two Israeli tourists and their Egyptian tour guide in Alexandria on October 8, a day after Hamas conducted its attack, and thousands of Jordanians demonstrated in Amman against Israel. As a result, both countries are on heightened alert. Egypt has explicitly stated that it will not allow large refugee flows from Gaza into its territory. And Jordan banned demonstrations near its border with Israel.

By contrast, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates condemned Hamas, with the Emirati government calling the group’s actions a “serious and grave escalation” and declaring that it was “appalled” by the attacks on civilians. These statements come at a time when diplomatic relations between Israel and the two countries are delicate.

To Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump’s plan to remove the entire population of Gaza while the Strip is rebuilt is “unworkable,” at least “as a concrete proposal.” But it is welcome insofar as “its sheer iconoclasm might lead to a healthy rethinking of U.S. strategy and perhaps of Arab and Israeli policies as well.” The U.S., writes Abrams, must not only move beyond the failed approach to Gaza, but also must reject other assumptions that have failed time and again. One is the commitment to an illusory stability:

For two decades, what American policymakers have called “stability” has meant the preservation of the situation in which Gaza was entirely under Hamas control, Hizballah dominated Lebanon, and Iran’s nuclear program advanced. A better term for that situation would have been “erosion,” as U.S. influence steadily slipped away and Washington’s allies became less secure. Now, the United States has a chance to stop that process and aim instead for “reinforcement”: bolstering its interests and allies and actively weakening its adversaries. The result would be a region where threats diminish and U.S. alliances grow stronger.

Such an approach must be applied above all to the greatest threat in today’s Middle East, that of a nuclear Iran:

Trump clearly remains open to the possibility (however small) that an aging [Iranian supreme leader Ali] Khamenei, after witnessing the collapse of [his regional proxies], mulling the possibility of brutal economic sanctions, and being fully aware of the restiveness of his own population, would accept an agreement that stops the nuclear-weapons program and halts payments and arms shipments to Iran’s proxies. But Trump should be equally aware of the trap Khamenei might be setting for him: a phony new negotiation meant to ensnare Washington in talks for years, with Tehran’s negotiators leading Trump on with the mirage of a successful deal and a Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the road while the Iranian nuclear-weapons program grows in the shadows.