Still, there is one thing that the United States can do, Iraqis said: keep the war with Hamas contained.
Mohammed Akram Ali, 43, a primary schoolteacher in Baghdad, said he had hoped that America would restrain Israel and help restore calm to the region.
“Hamas committed massacres of Israelis, but also the Israelis committed massacres and nobody can say, ‘Stop, it’s enough’ to them,” said Mr. Ali. “We demand that America take a position where it says, ‘Enough’ to everyone so that they can restore what they lost of their reputation in Iraq.”
Frustration with the United States has grown across the region as Mr. Blinken’s diplomatic tour presented the unusual spectacle of authoritarian Arab rulers lecturing American officials about human rights.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, told Mr. Blinken that Israel must lift its siege on Gaza and that the kingdom “rejects the destruction of infrastructure and vital services that affect their daily lives.”
In Egypt, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi falsely claimed that Jews in his country had never experienced persecution and suggested that the United States was more shocked by the killing of Israelis than decades of Palestinian oppression.
“Yes, it is true what happened over the past nine days was very difficult and too much, and we unequivocally condemn it,” Mr. el-Sisi told Mr. Blinken about the Hamas attacks. “But we need to understand that this is the result of accumulated fury and hatred over four decades, where the Palestinians had no hope to find a solution.”
After the explosion on Tuesday at Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, denunciations of Israel flowed in from Arab countries.
Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry blamed the attack on the Israeli military, demanding that the international community “let go of its double standards” to hold Israel accountable. Even the United Arab Emirates, which led a push for Arab countries to establish ties with Israel in 2020, condemned the “Israeli attack.”
In Gaza, Wisam Abu Jamae, 27, compared the Western response after the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year with the relative lack of condemnation of Israel’s siege of Gaza, saying that the discrepancy was “not logical.”
“If the world cared enough about us, we would not be where we are today,” she said, as the sound of Israeli warplanes droned overhead.
“Every minute, one family is removed from the record of existence.”