“HUGE breakthrough today,” Donald Trump tweeted as he announced the new peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. The deal makes the UAE the first Arabian Gulf and the third Arab nation, after Egypt and Jordan, to have diplomatic ties with Israel. But the new Israel-UAE partnership should not bother anyone. While it accepts the Israeli annexation of the West Bank and will encourage tourism and trade between the two countries, it is in fact nothing more than an arrangement to give an Arab stamp of approval to Israel’s status quo of land grabbing, house demolition , arbitrary extrajudicial killings, apartheid laws and other abuses of Palestinian rights.
The deal must be seen in the context of more than three years of Trump administration policies that have tightened Israel’s grip on the Palestinians: moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, recognizing the Golan Heights as Israeli territory, and the making a so-called peace plan without Palestinian participation or input. While no U.S. administration has successfully passed a resolution for Israel’s now 53-year occupation, the Trump years are primarily geared toward the Palestinian cause. Palestinian leader Hanan Ashrawi wrote on Twitter that with this deal, “Israel was rewarded for not openly declaring what it has done illegally & persistently since Palestine since the beginning of the occupation.”
Indeed, with Trump at the helm and son-in-law Jared Kushner as the primary strategist, even concessions to Palestinians have been removed. To add insult to injury, although the deal had been couched in terms of a pledge by Israel to stop annexation of Palestinian territories, he said in his Israeli press conference announcing the deal, Netanyahu said that annexation was “still on the table” was and that it was something he is “dedicated to.”
Among the most brutal aspects of this period for Palestinians was the loss of support for their cause in neighboring Arab states. The Arab political party in Israel, Balad, said that by signing this pact, “the UAE is officially joining Israel against Palestine, and placing itself in the camp of the enemies of the Palestinian people.”
The UAE has previously held a position in line with public opinion in Gulf and Middle Eastern countries that the acceptance of formal diplomatic relations with Israel should only take place in exchange for a just peace and in accordance with international law. Back in June, Emirati’s ambassador to the US, Yousef al-Otaiba, penned an article in the newspaper Yediot Ahronot, the Israeli equivalent of USA Today, and called directly in Hebrew for Israel not to annex the West Bank. Now, by working out an agreement with Trump and Netanyahu to normalize relations, the UAE has made itself Israel’s partner in cementing de facto annexation and persistent apartheid.
The UAE’s shift from supporting Palestinian dignity and freedom to supporting the never-ending occupation of Israel is a deliberate move by UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, a staunch dictator of the Middle East who used his military and financial resources of his country used to move against democracy and respect for human rights under the guise of fighting Islamic terrorism. His support for Israel cements his relationship with the Trump administration. Trump has already gone out of his way to push billions of dollars in arms sales to the UAE, despite opposition from Congress because of a high number of civilian casualties associated with the use of those weapons in Yemen.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has also defended the UAE against credible reports that U.S. weapons sold to the UAE have been transferred to Yemen to groups linked to al-Qaida, hardline Salafi militias and Yemeni separatists. The UAE was also stunned by revelations of secret prisons it had operated in Yemen, where prisoners were subjected to horrific forms of torture, including “the grill,” where victims were “tied to a spire like a roast” and spun in a circle of fire. “In Libya, the UAE has been criticized for violating a 2011 UN Security Council arms embargo by supplying combat equipment to the LAAF, the armed group commanded by General Khalifa Haftar with a well-established record of human rights abuses. That this deal with Israel gives the UAE a need of imprisonment of respectability.
But it is impossible to understand the impetus for this deal without placing it in the context of the ongoing hostilities between all three countries and Iran. Following the old adage that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, Israel has in recent years negotiated with several Gulf states, including the UAE, to retaliate against Iran’s growing influence in the region. When the communiqué announced on the Israeli-UAE deal is being considered, the US, Israel and the UAE “share a similar view regarding threats in the region.” This is in line with Trump’s obsession with Iran, which revolves around Iran’s nuclear deal and its “maximum pressure” campaign designed to force Iran back to the negotiating table to make a “better deal”. In announcing the UAE-Israeli pact, Trump declared with flying bravado that if he wins the election, he will have a new deal with Iran within 30 days. Anyone who believes this should be almost as mad as Trump.
The fact that this agreement between two countries in the Middle East was first announced thousands of miles away in Washington shows that it is more about reducing Trump’s successful election campaign and improving Netanyahu’s civilized image in Israel than bringing peace to the Middle East. It also shows that Netanyahu and bin Zayed have a stake in watching Trump win a second term in the White House. Instead of pointing out the hollanness of the pact, Joe Biden’s response was unfortunately to congratulate Israel and the UAE and try to take credit for the deal. “I have personally spent time with leaders from both Israel and the UAE during our administration, and built the cause for cooperation and broader engagement,” he said. “I am gratified by today’s announcement.”
The normalization of relations between the UAE and Israel, facilitated by the US, serves to support three repressive leaders – Trump, Netanyahu and bin Zayed – and will cause even more damage to Palestinians. It is both a disgrace and a disgrace.
