In his December 13, 2020 column in the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, senior Lebanese journalist Hazem Saghiya defends the countries that recently normalized their relations with Israel. These countries, he says, have crucial existential concerns and national needs of their own, and they cannot be expected to sacrifice them for the sake of the Palestinian cause, "to which nobody ascribes much importance any longer." He stressed that, although everyone recognizes the Palestinians' right to an independent state, their cause is no longer consistent with the national interests of other Arab states, and sometimes even contravenes these interests. He adds that over the years, the gap - and even conflict - between the Palestinian and Arab interests gradually increased, while the number of countries engaged in war with Israel steadily declined. At the same time, various elements in the Arab world, such as Iran and Syria, as well as Islamists, leftists and pan-Arab nationalists, exploited the Palestinian cause for their own ends, brandishing bombastic slogans about Arab unity and defeating the West, which only served to render the Palestinian issue unsolvable. Nostalgia for these slogans will not bring the Palestinians any achievements, he warns.