As the afternoon light softened, a man holding a megaphone stepped to the front of a crowd of about 200 people in the Bahraini capital, Manama, and began to shout at the top of his lungs.
The demonstrators, waving Palestinian flags, repeated his words with gusto, imploring their American-allied authoritarian government to expel the Israeli ambassador who was appointed two years ago, after Bahrain established diplomatic ties with Israel.
“No Zionist embassy on Bahraini land!” they chanted. “No American military bases on Bahraini land!”
Less than four miles away, American and European men in full military regalia gathered for the Manama Dialogue, an annual conference that brings together senior officials from Western powers and the Middle East to discuss regional security. They milled about a gilded ballroom in the heavily guarded Ritz-Carlton hotel just hours after the protest — largely unaware that it had even occurred.
When Bahrain’s crown prince, Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, took to the stage, he pleased much of the audience by condemning Hamas, the Palestinian armed group that runs Gaza and which led the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed about 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities.
The war in Gaza that followed the attack has not only laid bare a chasm between many Arab leaders and their people; it has widened it.