For much of the last 70 years the cause of Palestine stirred the Arab street. From Yemen to Morocco and all points in between, laments were sung in song and enshrined in poetry as the decades mounted without a Palestinian state. Regional statesmen built careers by standing by a people without a land. Wars were fought and lost in their name.

After the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, that slowly began to change and by the time Iran became the preoccupation of the US and its allies in the region, the Palestinians were cast into the unfamiliar role of playing second fiddle. Then came Donald Trump, and ever since the once-overarching cause of the region has barely been given a seat in the orchestra pit.

The unveiling of the US president’s much-delayed Middle East “peace plan” has generated neither enthusiasm nor anger – only apathy – in a region that no longer views the fate of the Palestinians as a lynchpin, or – in some cases – even a cause worth championing loudly.

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So far has the pendulum swung that ambassadors from Oman, Bahrain and the UAE were present when Trump unveiled the plan in the White House. This was no longer whispered support from the shadows – instead it marked a very public endorsement.

Even in Jordan and Lebanon, which are more tied than other countries to what may come next, the lead-up brought little outrage. As Trump spoke, south Beirut, long a bastion of resistance to Israel, was adorned with posters of the slain Iranian general, Qassem Suleimani and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah said the US plan would not have happened without the “complicity and betrayal” of several Arab states. The rest of the city felt weighed down by its more pressing concerns – how to outride an economic meltdown.

Riyadh, which once drew much of its regional clout from defending the Palestinians, was mute as the hour drew near. So too, Abu Dhabi, which shares its larger neighbour’s focus on Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, and rails at the latter’s links to the Palestinian group Hamas. In Cairo, a bedrock of the earlier years of Palestinian struggles, there was little talk of a plan set to shred the scope of deals put to earlier leaders.

There was to be no return to 1967 lines, only a hint of Arab control of part of East Jerusalem, Israeli settlements would be annexed and the Jordan Valley kept under Israeli control. There were suggestions of land links between Gaza and what was left of the West Bank, and the remnants of Palestinian control could be called a state; but no Palestinian leader could, or would dare go for it. “It’s like being invited to Christmas dinner after only the bones of the turkey are left,” said Raad Ghandour, a 36-year-old Palestinian from the Sabra Shatila camp in the Lebanese capital. “It’s shameful to propose such a thing.”

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Despite the enormous shift in what the US tabled in 2000 at Bill Clinton’s Camp David summit and what it is prepared to do now, there was no pushback among its allies – all of whom had been briefed ahead of time. Saudi Arabia, in particular, had been an intrinsic part of the lead-up process; the country’s crown prince is on warm terms with Trump’s son-in-law and adviser on the Middle East, Jared Kushner, who put the plan together. The pair had come to share many aspects of a worldview, particularly the thinking that drove Trump’s transactional mindset.

The Palestinians had become a burden, financially and politically, and were no longer worth the investment, the Saudi heir to the throne had concluded. There were bigger fish to fry in Iran, after all, and Israel could help them do that.

Improved relations with Israel over the past three years have aimed to condition the kingdom to the change in approach – and foe. Over the weekend, Israel allowed its citizens to travel to Saudi Arabia for religious or trade purposes. Gulf states, too, are relaxing travel bans on a country that was long seen as the obstacle to regional peace, but is increasingly being viewed as a partner.

Where this leaves the Palestinians, or a cause that had galvanised the region for so long, remains of great alarm to many who see no enduring peace as long as grievances from the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948 are left unaddressed.

There will be pro forma protests from the countries that have underwritten such a profound historical shift, and claims that a two-state solution remains essential.

But this announcement seems very much like the death-knell for the formula once envisaged by Trump’s predecessors. The conversation has now moved so far in one direction it is likely to stay there. And those in the region who once championed the cause do not seem to mind.