Public opinion among the Palestinians' strongest natural supporters, their fellow Arabs, has been notably slower to rally on their behalf than during the two previous Israeli onslaughts on Gaza in the past five years. Pressure on Arab diplomats to do something has been commensurately slower to mount. Only now, after a month of gore, have officials from elsewhere in the Arab world gathered in Cairo in an effort to arrange a longer-lasting truce. One reason for the tardy Arab response is simple: compassion fatigue. There are too many other Arab wars going on and too many troubles in the region for many Arabs to sustain their instinctive sympathy for the Palestinians. In Syria's civil war, which has already left at least 170,000 dead, nearly as many died there in a single week in mid-July as the 1,800-plus Palestinians who have been killed during Israel's four-week campaign in Gaza. Bombs and rockets have been falling on the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi. This week the Yazidis of northern Iraq (see next article) have been threatened with annihilation in the face of a jihadist onslaught. Compared with such horrors, Arabs may be less keen to single out their old Israeli foe.
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