A historic agreement reached earlier this week between the United Arab Emirates and Israel established new diplomatic ties in the Middle East, a move that Palestinians have said is coming to “betrayal.”
The agreement halted Israeli plans to annex parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, but instead of increasing stability and peace in the region, Palestinian officials say the deal further undermined them.
“I never expected this poison dagger to come from an Arab country,” said a senior Palestinian official and veteran negotiator, Saeb Erekat said Friday. “You reward aggression.”
“With this movement, you have destroyed every possibility of peace between Palestinians and Israelis,” he added, speaking to the UAE.
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This week’s agreement made the UAE the third Arab country in the Middle East to recognize and establish full diplomatic ties with Israel, a political movement that has driven Israelis and Western nations since the founding of Israel in 1948.
The UAE presented its new diplomatic ties as a way to secure peace in the region, by getting Israel to drop its annexation policy Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly promised to implement.
But Netanyahu has since made it clear that he will only “temporarily keep” his annexation tensions.
Because Israel has illegally occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 1967, the Palestinians, according to the United Nations, have taken the UAE agreement as a sign of their support for Israel over fellow Arabs.
“Today we begin a new era of peace between Israel and the Arab world,” President Trump said earlier this week. “There is a good chance that we will soon see more Arab countries joining this extended circle of peace.”
Palestinian officials are not the only ones who believe the agreement bans Israel from continuing relations with Arab nations while invading the Palestinians. The new agreement shows that Israel does not need to find peace with the Palestinians in order to grow its diplomatic ties in the Middle East.
“It is unfortunate at the moment to claim that the 53-year-old occupation is ‘unsustainable’, when Netanyahu has just proved that it is not only sustainable but can improve Israel’s ties with the Arab world, openly. , with the occupation still going on, ”wrote Anshel Pfeffer, a columnist for the Israeli Haaretz newspaper.
The Palestinian Authority said the deal was a “betrayal of Jerusalem, the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Palestinian cause,” which is a sentiment that seeks to encourage Arabs and Muslims, not only in the region but worldwide.
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Palestinian officials called on the Arab League and the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation to rally for an urgent meeting and condemn the movement.
But the UAE is a member of the OIC, and has gone much further due to its economic wealth as a result of its productive oil production, which is likely to prove a more pleasant motivator than Arab sentiment.
An appeal to the OIC is intended to isolate the Emiratis so that these other countries will not take the same step, said Ibrahim Dalalsha, a Palestinian analyst told the Associated Press.
“Whether it will succeed here or not, it remains to be seen,” he said.
Iran and Turkey, which are also members of the OIC, were quick to condemn the UAE, but they remain isolated from other countries in the region with their growing ties to alleged state-sponsored terrorism.
Israel and the UAE have a common enemy: Iran and Iran-supporting proxies.
The other powerhouse in the region, Saudi Arabia, which has reportedly worked with the US to fight terrorist organizations in the region with ties to Iran, remains allied with the UAE and the US, although the kingdom has not yet officially has diplomatic ties with Israel.
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Egypt and Jordan are the other two countries in the Middle East with official diplomatic relations with Israel. Both the UAE and Saudi Arabia have strong ties with Egypt and Jordan, suggesting that the Palestinians will be hard-pressed to find support from a wealthy Middle Eastern nation.
While the US and Israeli governments see the new diplomatic ties with the UAE as a success and an additional stabilizing force in the Middle East, the Palestinian people see it as another nail in the coffin as they struggle to recognize as a nation: 137 countries in the United Nations recognize Palestine as a state. Israel and the US do not.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
