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The UAE’s decision to establish diplomatic relations with Israel upholds a negotiated solution with Palestine on life support. There is no indication that forging relations with Israel is more successful in moving the Jewish state toward peace with Palestine on mutually acceptable terms than the failed formula of offering Arab recognition in exchange for peace.
Like it or not, the UAE may have done the Palestinians a favor by forging diplomatic relations with Israel. At first glance, the agreement deprives the Palestinians of a perceived trump card: Arab recognition in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories during the 1967 Middle East war, even if it has not proven to be a huge advantage.
Historically, forging diplomatic relations with the Jewish state has not been a magic wand to resolve a seemingly intractable dispute.
The carrot of recognition has not helped solve the problem of the Palestinians 72 years after they were first displaced by Israeli occupation and independence and despite the conclusion of peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, two states that, Unlike the United Arab Emirates, they had and still have a stake in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
It also did not prevent US President Donald J. Trump from accepting the legitimacy of the annexation of occupied Palestinian land.
However, the move by the United Arab Emirates helps to rescue options for a peace agreement that could be acceptable to both Palestinians and Israelis.
More importantly, it has helped wipe immediate Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank off the table by giving Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu the opportunity to temporarily set aside his promise to incorporate Palestinian land ahead of the November US presidential elections. United without being seen to be collapsing. to American pressure.
To be sure, Netanyahu suspended the uncanceled annexation plans in exchange for recognition by the UAE.
However, the reality is that Netanyahu or whoever succeeds him is unlikely to eventually get the green light from the United States in the foreseeable future, regardless of who wins the US presidential election.
Neither Trump nor his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, will want to jeopardize the evolving relations between Israel and the Arab states that annexation would certainly disrupt.
What it does is keep the options open; it does not open doors or create the basis for renewed peace negotiations. The UAE has almost officially embraced Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan that explicitly endorses the annexation principle, a non-negotiable principle for the Palestinians.
In other words, Israelis and Palestinians will have to resolve their dispute themselves. Outside powers can’t do it for them. However, outside powers can help ensure that Israelis and Palestinians have options and shape an environment conducive to a peace process.
And that’s where the problems start. Four decades of mediation efforts led primarily by the United States, often involving the uninitiated, have produced, at best, a seemingly intractable deadlock in which Israel has the upper hand.
The fault of failure runs.
Successive US administrations have favored Israel and have been reluctant to pressure it enough to allow for a viable solution.
Israeli governments diverged in their sincerity in adopting a two-state solution, with Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving head of government, making it clear that he does not want a truly independent Palestinian state to emerge. In fact, it has redefined the concept as one perceived by Palestinians as a Bantustan at best.
Likewise, the Palestinians proved to be their own worst enemies. A corrupt Palestinian Authority prioritized its own vested interests.
The Palestinians were also divided between Palestinian President Mahmood Abbas’s Fatah movement, which is clinging to the hope of some miracle that will put decades of peace talks back on track, and Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip.
Stripped of its rhetoric, Hamas essentially argues that the Palestinian Authority’s strategy of handing over its trump cards – recognition of Israel and abandonment of the legitimacy of political violence – has not persuaded Israel to make the minimal concessions necessary.
These include an end to the Israeli settlement policy in the West Bank, a Palestinian administrative involvement in East Jerusalem, and an agreement on the final borders between Israel and Palestine based on the pre-1967 war borders, albeit modified by land exchanges. They acknowledge facts on the ground.
Suspending the annexation of the UAE for now and keeping the door open for negotiations is a gamble. The main risk is gray swans or predictable interruptions, not black swans or unpredictable events.
The biggest risk beyond an Israeli decision at some point to move forward with annexation is the West Bank’s protest against Israeli policy to which Israel responds with a heavy hand and military escalation in Gaza.
Palestinian protest is almost a fact in a world that has just ended a decade of defiance and dissent, with the popular Arab revolts of 2011 and 2019/2020 as the centerpiece and the prospect of global social unrest in the 2020s as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. and the worst global economic recession since World War II. Add to this the global awareness of deep-rooted social injustice and racial inequality.
Protest is likely, whatever happens. In the hopes of a fading two-state solution, the alternatives are a one-state solution or continued occupation. Both are potential drivers of social unrest.
Israeli warplanes bombarded Gaza, one of the most densely populated regions in the world blockaded by Israel and Egypt, every night as Israeli and Emirati diplomats finalized the terms of their establishment of diplomatic relations. The bombings came in response to rocket fire and balloon bombs from Gaza into Israel.
Potentially heavy-handed Israeli responses to Palestinian protests and the Gaza attacks could put the UAE in an awkward position.
With freedom of expression in the United Arab Emirates and much of the Gulf severely repressed and in the absence of credible public opinion polls, it is difficult to assess public empathy for the Palestinians.
A rare poll in Saudi Arabia by a credible non-Saudi polling company showed that the Palestinian issue ranked second after Iran among the foreign policy concerns of the kingdom’s public. It is fair to assume that the UAE would not be much different.
While tweeters from the UAE overwhelmingly welcomed the UAE’s reach to Israel, Emiratis abroad were left to be more critical.
“The dustbin of history houses all traitors, whatever their names and the names of their families,” tweeted an Emirati activist in exile.
The UAE can hope that diplomatic ties will allow it to push Israel toward credible peace negotiations with the Palestinians, in part by empowering Palestinian leaders beholden to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed.
It’s a strategy that the United States has adopted for much of the last four decades with little success. It is unclear why the United Arab Emirates would succeed where others failed.
Author’s Note: An initial version of this story was first published by Within Arabia
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