Saudi-UAE notions of Islam are at the core of Israeli thinking on post-war Gaza

Thank you for joining me today. I am grateful to those who have become paid subscribers. I need some more to enable me to continue cutting through the fog of kinetic and information wars and offer fact-based analysis. No doubt, you will have noticed that The Turbulent World has no sponsors and no advertisers. This guarantees the column and podcast’s independence. Instead, The Turbulent World depends on the support of its readers and listeners to cover the cost of producing the column and podcast. You can contribute by clicking on the subscription button at and choosing one of the subscription options.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government is mulling a proposal for the post-war administration of Gaza that would put the battle to define moderate Islam in the 21^st century on the front burner of Middle Eastern politics and allow the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to export their autocratic notion of ‘moderate’ Islam.

Potentially, the 32-page proposal, if successfully implemented, would give the two Gulf states a leg up in their propagation of a socially less restrictive, religiously more tolerant Islam that rejects democracy and political pluralism, advocated by Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama, the world’s largest, most moderate Muslim civil society movement, in favour of a contested Islamic principle of absolute obedience to the ruler.

Entitled “From a Murderous Regime to a Moderate Society,” the proposal calls for a cultural and political revamp of Gaza and the creation of a “moderate Muslim entity” in the mould of the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Israel’s government mulls a proposal for post-war Gaza. Credit: Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies