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On Friday night, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, announced the achievement of an agreement between Israel and Bahrain for the normalization of relations between the two countries. It means that Bahrain, the fourth Arab country in history, will begin to have diplomatic relations with Israel, officially recognizing it as a state. It is a major diplomatic victory for Trump, who negotiated the deal and who last month achieved the same result with the United Arab Emirates, which became the first Persian Gulf country to recognize Israel, the third among Arab countries after Egypt and Jordan. And it is also a good result for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Nethanyahu. While it is an agreement that further isolates the Palestinians.
Joint statement by the United States, the Kingdom of Bahrain and the State of Israel pic.twitter.com/xMquRkGtpM
– Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 11, 2020
Bahrain is a small monarchy of 1.5 million people and does not share borders with Israel, with whom it has never fought even a war. But, like most Arab countries, it never recognized Israel because of its occupation of the Palestinian territories. Things will change after what Trump called “another historic milestone,” announcing the agreement in a joint statement written together with Netanyahu and Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. The announcement, however, came on the day of the 19th anniversary of the attack on the Twin Towers: “there is no more forceful response than this agreement to the hatred caused by September 11,” Trump told reporters.
– Read also: The agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, well explained
The statement said that “by opening dialogue and direct links between these two dynamic societies and these advanced economies, the positive transformation of the Middle East will continue and increase the stability, security and prosperity of the region.” However, the details of the agreement are not yet known, nor what are the commitments assumed by the two parties to facilitate it: however, on the occasion of the agreement with the United Arab Emirates, Israel had promised to suspend the claims on some territories that the plan for Trump assigned the Palestinians to conclude the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (the plan, however, is heavily skewed in favor of Israel).
Netanyahu stressed that “26 years passed between the second peace agreement with an Arab country and the third”, referring to that of Jordan and the United Arab Emirates “, and only 29 days between the third and the fourth. And others will come» In fact, it is believed that other Arab countries, both in the Persian Gulf and beyond, can normalize their relations with Israel. For example, we are talking about Oman and Sudan. All these agreements are made with the implicit consent of Saudi Arabia, the real power in the region, which is not believed to be in the process of making deals with Israel.
Efforts by the Palestinian government to pressure the Arab League to condemn the normalization agreements with Israel until an independent state is reached have suffered yet another defeat, which analysts say will further weaken the Palestinians in peace negotiations with Israel. . The statement says that Bahrain and Israel will commit “to reach a just, comprehensive and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that will allow the Palestinians to express their full potential.”
For Trump, instead, it is a diplomatic victory a few weeks before the presidential elections, although its electoral consequences are difficult to estimate. Last week he had already announced the draft agreement for the recognition of Israel by Kosovo and for the transfer of the Serbian embassy from Tel Aviv, where almost all foreign diplomatic offices are located, to Jerusalem, where it had been transferred. United States in 2018.
However, as in the case of the agreement with the United Arab Emirates, the one with Bahrain will not change the Middle East. What really changes things could instead be a normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which nevertheless has a more powerful conservative Islamic component, which would not support the agreement, and which then has much more to lose in terms possible retaliation by the government. Iran.
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