When Israel began to normalize relations with some of its neighbors in 2020, as part of the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords, many analysts began to wonder whether the Palestinian cause still mattered to the Arab world. Doubts about the salience of the issue for Arabs grew in late 2023, when it appeared that Saudi Arabia might also join the accords, normalizing relations with Israel without demanding, in exchange, the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

The Israeli military campaign in Gaza that followed Hamas’s attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, provoked international outrage at the scale of violence used against Palestinian civilians and Israel’s blockade of humanitarian assistance to Gaza. Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel have long endured violence and deprivation, but Arab opposition to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories has rarely been a decisive factor in the conflict. Considering the unprecedented level of devastation this round of fighting has wreaked, many observers anticipated that anger among ordinary citizens in Arab states might lead to significant shifts in their governments’ rhetoric and policy.

Instead, some scholars have argued that the October 7 attacks and the events that followed have in fact weakened the Palestinian cause, noting that the issue has largely fallen off the international agenda. Some cite, for example, the fact that none of the Arab countries that signed peace treaties with Israel have broken those relations. Similarly, during U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent trip to Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, the issue took a back seat, at least publicly, overshadowed by the parties’ economic interests. To some observers, popular outrage in the Arab world over the war seemed like a proverbial “dog that did not bark.”

This view, however, misses a crucial reality. As our opinion polling in the region demonstrates, Arab public opinion has indeed shifted—and in ways that have influenced the conduct of regimes in Arab countries. Although their core interests have not meaningfully changed as a result of the conflict in Gaza, their foreign policies have been constrained by their citizens’ intensifying anger about Israeli offensives. After Israel began its campaign in Gaza, Arab-Israeli normalization was brought to a halt. And during Trump’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia, the expansion of the Abraham Accords was not on the agenda. Despite October 7 and the Gaza war, some Arab governments still hoped for closer ties with Israel, believing such relations would serve their strategic interests. But they have not been able to move forward because of public opposition. The lack of progress on that agenda is the true “dog that did not bark.”

Today, unlike in the days before October 7, regional leaders cannot simply ignore their populations’ support for the Palestinian cause. If Israel is to make meaningful progress on its integration into the region, some path to Palestinian statehood will have to be on the table.

Ordinary citizens in the Middle East and North Africa have long supported Palestinian statehood. And in the nine months that........

© Foreign Affairs