Many Arab countries have banned demonstrations for years. Now they allow them partly in favor of the Palestinians. But at the same time, they are afraid of being turned against them.

In late October, Egyptians were allowed to do something they hadn’t been allowed to do for years: protest. The government does not support the right of assembly. However, about two weeks ago, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi allowed pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Some of the protesters headed to Tahrir Square, the square symbol of the Arab Spring in 2011. A movement that eventually toppled former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak.

“Palestinian has always been a politicizing factor for Egyptian youth,” Hossam al-Haptian, a researcher and activist now living in Germany who writes regularly on Egyptian politics, told Deutsche Welle.

“For many Egyptian political activists, their involvement with politics is because of the Palestinian. The 2011 uprising in Egypt was the culmination of a process that had begun a decade earlier with the second Palestinian Intifada.”

Protest as much as…

Egyptian authorities to prevent pro-Palestinian protests from turning into anti-government demonstrations stopped and arrested more than 100 people while beefing up security in public squares, Egyptian journalist and blogger Mossam Al Hamalavi reported.

The Egyptian government is not the only regime in the region that fears that the Palestinian issue could threaten the political status.

“Regional leaders always see the Palestinian as a way for people to vent their anger, but it’s a double-edged sword. When conditions in a country are very bad, the protests could well be perceived as criticism of the ruling regime,” Jost Hilterman, head of the Middle East and North Africa program at the so-called International Crisis Group, a think tank, explains to DW thinking.

Politics of it seems

The Bahraini government has also banned demonstrations since 2011, but recently allowed pro-Palestinian demonstrations. In Tunisia, there have also been large pro-Palestinian demonstrations, and the country’s increasingly authoritarian leader Qais Sayed is using the locals’ feelings of solidarity with the Palestinians for his own purposes and to boost his own popularity.

“Arab leaders today may be willing to talk about Palestine, but few are ready or able to put their words into action,” an Al Jazeera political analyst recently wrote. This is also the reason that great things were not expected from the two extraordinary sessions on the Palestinian issue in Saudi Arabia. One of the Arab League and the other of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation.

“Regimes want to show that they are doing something, even if they are not,” concludes Jost Hilterman.