Will Israel’s war on Gaza lead to Sunni-Shiite unity?

The more Israel drops bombs on the Gaza Strip and attacks Palestinians in the West Bank, the more angry Muslims become, whether Sunni or Shiite, which raises the question of whether the two sects of Islam could unite against Israel and its Western allies in this conflict.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is per se a religious conflict, not a geographical or political one. Israel established its state more than seven decades ago on the basis of religion when it called for all Jews from all over the world to flock to Palestine for their “Israeli state”. The first Jewish colony was established in Palestine by the British Jew Moses Montefiore in 1837, and then Jews started flocking to Palestine until their number reached about 120,000 Jews in 1948, when Britain ended its Mandate in Palestine. On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, announced the establishment of the State of Israel. To encourage more Jewish immigration to Palestine, the Zionist movement issued the “Law of Return” which allows any Jew from anywhere in the world to immigrate to Palestine and gain Israeli citizenship.

As for the Arab and Muslim world, they dealt with the issue as a political one and called for the necessity of establishing a Palestinian state on the borders that had been recognized on June 4, 1967, following their recognition of Israel. The 1967 borders refer to the line of confrontation between Israel from one side and Palestine and Syria from the other side on the eve of the Six-Day War (June 5, 1967), when Israel took control of the West Bank, Gaza and other Palestinian territories, as well as Syria’s Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. The border line was adopted internationally by United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which became the basis for achieving the two-state solution.

For Israelis, this Arab-Israeli war enhanced the notion that the establishment of the State of Israel was a divine hint they could have their own Great Israel state or the “Promised Land”, according to the Encyclopedia of Jews, Judaism and Zionism by late Egyptian Professor Abdel Wahab Al-Masri.

However, as a result of the recent Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, where more than 8,600 people (including over 3,500 children) have been killed since October7, and amid Israeli calls for the people of Gaza to relocate from the north of the Strip to the south, showing how Israel continues its scheme to expand its religious state until the borders with Egypt, fears have surfaced about the conflict expanding into a religious war, which has been voiced by several politicians. Arab League Secretary General Ahmed Abu El Gheit, in his speech at the Cairo Summit for Peace last week, warned against the outbreak of “a regional religious war,” in which Sunni and Shiite Muslims unite against Israel.

This Sunni-Shiite rapprochement was noticed when the former president of the Iranian-backed Shiite Supreme Revolutionary Committee of Yemen, Mohamed Ali al-Houthi, called upon Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar (the world’s top Sunni Islamic institution based in Egypt) to declare “jihad” for Arab armies to fight the Israeli occupation and to protect Muslims and the Islamic sanctuary sites of Jerusalem from Israeli attacks. 

“I invite Al-Azhar and its sheik Ahmed Al-Tayeb and the Mufti of the Arab regimes to declare jihad and issue a fatwa declaring it obligatory for the Arab armies,” al-Houthi said on X (formerly known as Twitter) on Friday evening after Israel intensified its artillery bombardment on Gaza Strip and cut internet and mobile access after it had also imposed a complete siege on the 2.2 million people in Gaza.

ادعو الأزهر وشيخه#احمد_الطيب و مفتي الأنظمة العربية
 إلى إعلان الجهاد والافتاء بوجوبه على الجيوش العربية
امتثالا لقوله تعالى 
{وَمَا لَكُمۡ لَا تُقَٰتِلُونَ فِي سَبِيلِ ٱللَّهِ وَٱلۡمُسۡتَضۡعَفِينَ مِنَ ٱلرِّجَالِ وَٱلنِّسَآءِ وَٱلۡوِلۡدَٰنِ ٱلَّذِينَ يَقُولُونَ رَبَّنَآ… pic.twitter.com/xDqprwxnIH

— محمد علي الحوثي (@Moh_Alhouthi) October 27, 2023

Al-Houthi’s call came as a comment on a post written by Al-Azhar Grand Imam Ahmed Al-Tayeb, who called upon all Muslims to stand by the Palestinians, who are being subjected to genocide and collective punishment by the Israeli occupation forces in the Gaza Strip.

“What is being perpetrated by the vicious Zionist occupation in Gaza, in the form of intense bombing, killing, cutting off electricity and internet, destroying all aspects of life, and blocking information about the scale of massacres and war crimes taking place, constitutes blind terrorism and a blatant violation of legal and humanitarian conventions and norms. The world must condemn and take decisive action to stop this at once,” Al-Tayeb said on his official Facebook page.

“It is the duty of the Arab and Islamic nations, along with all free people of the world, to unite and find an immediate solution and rescue the oppressed Sunni Palestinian people, who are facing an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe,” he added.

Shiite countries like Iran and its allies in the “Axis of Resistance” have announced their support for the Palestinians against Israel and threatened that, in case the United States participated in a ground offensive by Israel inside Gaza, US interests in the Middle East would be targeted. The Axis of Resistance is an anti-Israeli and anti-Western alliance that consists of the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Houthis of Yemen, Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, and Syria’s pro-Al-Assad Al-Ba’ath group.

Since the beginning of the conflict, Hezbollah and Israel have fired missiles at each other along the Israeli-Lebanese borders, while the Houthis have fired missiles and drones against Israel from Yemen in response to the Israeli attacks on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Also, Washington's full support for Israel militarily, politically, and financially was responded to by attacking US interests in the Middle East, including a US military base in Iraq and US troops in Syria.

The circle of conflict is vulnerable to expansion if Israel continues its genocide against the Palestinians inside Gaza and violations in the West Bank and Jerusalem, which is one of the Muslims’ noble sanctuaries. At that time, Muslims, regardless of their sect, could unite against Israel and its Western allies.

The idea of making a “tactical” alliance between the Sunnis and Shiites against Israeli’s threat exists but would only be temporary because they are two contradictory and conflicting projects, said Ahmed Baan, an Egyptian expert in political Islam, in comments to Jusoor Post.

“We cannot say that it could be a complete strategic alliance or agreement on a unified project,” he said, noting that there is a noticeable approach through the Axis of Resistance in the main issue of Palestine in the Middle East, which enhances this Sunni-Shiite rapprochement.

In response to a question on whether Islamic institutions in the world will call upon all Muslims to fight Israel and its alliances, Baan said that if Arab and Muslim governments and public opinions are in line with each other regarding the danger of what will happen to the existence of their nations, the religious institutions will express the correct opinion in the face of this danger.

“The danger of the Zionist project is not to Gaza or to Egypt, but to the entire Islamic and Arab world. Therefore, if the nation does not wake up to confront this danger and protect its interests, it is normal for jurisprudential references and fatwas to come together and provide a legitimate opinion on the issue, because the unity of the entire nation must be done to confront this danger,” he explained.