In 2021, the U.S. removed Yemen’s Houthi rebels from its official list of foreign terrorist groups, and ceased helping the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in their war against the rebels. Now that these Iran-backed guerrillas are attacking international shipping, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh are reluctant to help Washington fight them. Israel, meanwhile, admitted last week that a cruise missile fired by the Houthis had successfully penetrated its air defenses and landed near Eilat. Hussain Abdul-Hussain comments:

Under the Biden administration’s strategy of “regional integration,” America’s Arab allies—Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Egypt—are members of Combined Task Force (CTF) 153, whose mission is to guarantee the security of the Red and the Arabian seas. Yet when Yemen’s Houthi forces started targeting ships, these Arab countries passed on Washington’s invitation [to take part in defending them]. Some believe this was because Riyadh and Abu Dhabi correctly calculated that Biden might change course midway and quit, leaving them facing renewed animosity from Tehran and the Houthis.

With [the U.S. envoy Bret] McGurk’s reported meeting to ask the Iranians to rein in the Houthis, the Saudis and the Emiratis were proven right. They likely see this as evidence that Biden is an unreliable ally, and that if he thinks that diplomacy is the way forward, Saudi Arabia and the UAE can reach out to Iran, and its proxies, on their own. Consistency is key to successful foreign policy. The Biden administration has not shown this.

Addressing a recent meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Central Committee, Mahmoud Abbas criticized Hamas more sharply than he has previously (at least in public), calling them “sons of dogs.” The eighty-nine-year-old Palestinian Authority president urged the terrorist group to “stop the war of extermination in Gaza” and “hand over the American hostages.” The editors of the New York Sun comment:

Mr. Abbas has long been at odds with Hamas, which violently ousted his Fatah party from Gaza in 2007. The tone of today’s outburst, though, is new. Comparing rivals to canines, which Arabs consider dirty, is startling. Its motivation, though, was unrelated to the plight of the 59 remaining hostages, including 23 living ones. Instead, it was an attempt to use an opportune moment for reviving Abbas’s receding clout.

[W]hile Hamas’s popularity among Palestinians soared after its orgy of killing on October 7, 2023, it is now sinking. The terrorists are hoarding Gaza aid caches that Israel declines to replenish. As the war drags on, anti-Hamas protests rage across the Strip. Polls show that Hamas’s previously elevated support among West Bank Arabs is also down. Striking the iron while it’s hot, Abbas apparently longs to retake center stage. Can he?

Diminishing support for Hamas is yet to match the contempt Arabs feel toward Abbas himself. Hamas considers him irrelevant for what it calls “the resistance.”

[Meanwhile], Abbas is yet to condemn Hamas’s October 7 massacre. His recent announcement of ending alms for terror is a ruse.

Abbas, it’s worth noting, hasn’t saved all his epithets for Hamas. He also twice said of the Americans, “may their fathers be cursed.” Of course, after a long career of anti-Semitic incitement, Abbas can’t be expected to have a moral awakening. Nor is there much incentive for him to fake one. But, like the protests in Gaza, Abbas’s recent diatribe is a sign that Hamas is perceived as weak and that its stock is sinking.