Alwaght- Recent Israeli attack on Qatar targeting the Hamas leaders has marked a turning point in West Asia security equations. Until now, many Arab countries were thinking that the range of Israeli aggression will remain limited to the occupied Palestine and the surrounding countries like Syria and Lebanon, but the Israeli regime has shattered this notion by taking its military operations deep into the Persian Gulf Arab monarchies.
Actually, the attack on Doha has called into question the Arab vision that normalization with Tel Aviv can mitigate the security threats and even create new economic opportunities and set off the alarm bells to the Persian Gulf Arab monarchies.
Now feeling the threat of Israeli aggression closer than what they were thinking, the Arab rulers are seeking options to protect their security and enhance their deterrence against the enemy through cooperation. Driven by this, Qatar has promised a collective response to the Israeli attacks.
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told CNN: "This response is currently being consulted and discussed with other partners, and a decision on the matter is expected to be made at the Arab and Islamic Summit to be held in Doha."
In such circumstances, the only formal collective defense tool among these nations, the Peninsula Shield Force (PSF), has once again come into focus. The central question now is what the probable Arab reaction to the recent aggression by Israel will be, and whether a military coalition in the form of the PSF can act as a serious deterrent against this regime's aggressive policies.
The PSF is the military arm of the (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council, established in 1984. Its primary objectives were to provide collective defense for the Council's members against external threats and to ensure internal security in the event of unrest. The force's command headquarters is located in Saudi Arabia, and its troops are composed of military units from the member states.
Over the past four decades, this force has responded to several crises. The most notable instance was its deployment to Bahrain during the 2011 protests, which occurred at Manama's request to support the Al Khalifa government. Although the force's presence drew international criticism, from the perspective of Arab rulers, the force demonstrated its effectiveness in maintaining internal stability. However, this force has never before been deployed against a direct external threat, particularly from an actor like Israel.
PSF challenges to deter Israel threats
Though the Arab rulers once again set their hopes on the PSF to create deterrence to the Israeli threats, this symbolic force faces serious challenges that limit its effective defense of territorial integrity of Arab countries.
The first major hurdle is the Arab militaries' deep reliance on US military and intelligence backing. Most of their advanced weapons and defense systems are built in the West, and using them effectively without Washington's support would be virtually impossible. This creates a fundamental conflict, as the US is a staunch strategic partner of the Israeli regime. It is highly unlikely that Washington would ever permit its Arab allies to use American-made hardware to confront its primary partner in the region.
This dependency effectively handcuffs the PSF, stripping it of any real independent decision-making power and reducing it to little more than a political symbol rather than a credible fighting force.
A second major obstacle is the normalization of relations with Tel Aviv by key (P) GCC members, namely the UAE and Bahrain. The 2020 Abraham Accords ushered in a new era of economic, security, and intelligence ties for Abu Dhabi and Manama with Tel Aviv. This growing political and economic alignment with Israel has severely undermined the possibility of forming a unified military coalition against Israel.
Simply put, how can the PSF be expected to confront a regime that some of its own member states now see as a partner? These deep rifts have left Israel better positioned than ever to exploit Arab divisions.
A third challenge is rooted in the deep political and ideological splits within the (P) GCC itself. The Riyadh-Abu Dhabi axis has been locked in a long-running struggle against Islamist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood, which hold significant influence in other Arab nations. These ideological divisions have not only blocked domestic political unity but have also prevented the emergence of a cohesive regional front to counter Israel.
For instance, Qatar's approach to the Muslim Brotherhood is on a collision course with those of Saudi Arabia and the UAE and this leads to distrust in joint military cooperation. These ideological gaps showed up in 2017 crisis when a Riyadh-dominated bloc boycott Doha for several years and imposed massive sanctions on it.
Furthermore, given Qatar's geography, many analysts believe the recent attack by Israel likely passed through Saudi or Emirati airspace. Crucially, neither country provided Doha with a radar warning or alert. This is a telling indicator that the Arab Gulf states are not only disunited in the face of threats from the Israeli regime but that their deep-seated political and security rivalries actively prevent any genuine collective action for their own—or the region's—defense.
Historical precedent also suggests that Arab nations typically only take concrete military action when their own territorial integrity is directly threatened, opting for non-intervention until that point.
Divisions over the Palestinian issue further cripple the PSF's potential. While Arab public opinion overwhelmingly still sees Palestine as the central cause, some Arab regimes—particularly Riyadh—are often more focused on weakening or even destroying groups like Hamas, which they view as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, than they are on countering Israeli occupation. This implicit alignment of interests between certain Arab capitals and Tel Aviv regarding resistance groups saps any necessary motivation to form a unified military front against Israel under the PSF banner.
Operationaly and organizationally, the PSF is suffering from serious limits. Though it enjoys thousands military forces on paper, it lacks an integrated operational structure and efficient command chain to counter foreign enemies. The decline to hold massive and regular maneuvers and weakness of intelligence coordination among its members, combined with limited access to unified defense systems, have seriously limited its real power to act.
Additionally, disparities in training levels and military capabilities among member states, coupled with a lack of sufficient joint exercises, make coordinating a unified military operation extremely difficult. As a result, the PSF has so far functioned more as a symbol of Arab unity than as a practical, integrated fighting force. It has yet to establish itself as a reliable, joint army capable of effectively defending regional security.
This inherent weakness and deficiency highlight that the force's actual defensive capacity against advanced threats remains limited and vulnerable.
The sum of these obstacles and divisions makes it clear that despite the serious threat posed by the Israeli regime's attack on Qatar and the shared sense of alarm it has generated across the Arab monarchies, the PSF in its current state is incapable of effectively defending the territorial integrity of these monarchies, even if the alarm bells ringing in Doha have spurred everyone into action.
So, as long as Arab rulers fail to fill the security and political gaps and depart from full dependence on the US protection, setting hopes on the PSF would remain largely symbolic and it is unlikely they can ensure true and sustainable security in the region against Israeli aggression.
