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Blossoming is, maybe, an understatement. Since the 1978 Camp David Accords, Israel has “normalized” relations with Egypt, Jordan (1994), Mauritania (1999), and most lately, the UAE and Bahrain. Last month Israel and Sudan additionally signed an settlement to normalize ties.
Yet by no means has the method of normalization been so quick, and pursued with such mutual enthusiasm, as between Israel and the UAE. And it goes beyond that. The UAE seems to have dropped, in sensible phrases, any objections to Israel’s occupation of Arab lands.
The Emirates final month hosted a bunch of Israeli settler leaders from the West Bank, territory occupied by Israel for the reason that 1967 conflict with Jordan, Syria and Egypt.
In October, it additionally allowed the import of wine produced by Israeli corporations within the Golan Heights, additionally occupied by Israel since 1967.
The UAE may also finance with the US and Israel a undertaking to “modernize” Israeli checkpoints within the West Bank used to regulate and monitor the motion of Palestinians.
This month the Israeli airline, El Al, and Etihad, the Emirati airline, signed a memorandum of understanding and will begin direct flights between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi early subsequent 12 months. Budget airline flydubai has already began its business service to Ben Gurion airport.
Etihad raised eyebrows, nonetheless, when it launched an commercial for flights to Tel Aviv which included an illustration with the caption “Second Temple.” The Second Temple, on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. In its place is the Haram Al-Sharif — the placement of the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosque (the third holiest website in Islam after Mecca and Medina). After an indignant backlash, Etihad rapidly eliminated it.
Then, on November 22, the Israeli cupboard ratified a mutual visa exemption with the UAE — the primary of its variety with any of the Arab states it has relations with.
Compare this with the case of the primary two international locations that made peace with Israel: Egypt and Jordan.
Egyptians and Jordanians — a few of whom have nonetheless vivid recollections of a number of wars with Israel — approached normalization cautiously or rejected it altogether. Just this week the Egyptian Union of Artistic Syndicates suspended singer and actor Mohamed Ramadan after it emerged on social media that he had attended a gathering within the UAE and posed for photographs with Israeli athletes and artists. Ramadan reportedly defined that he doesn’t ask every fan’s nationality.
Egypt and Israel signed the Camp David Peace Accords 42 years in the past. Jordanians, a majority of whom hint their roots again to historic Palestine, have additionally been hesitant to embrace Israel.
Palestinian ambassador to Austria Salah Abdel Shafi known as the tempo of normalization between the oil-rich nation and Israel “shocking.”
“If I compare the level of normalization between (Egypt and Jordan) and the UAE, within a record time [there have been] mutual visits, agreements in trade, basically all aspects … it is shocking,” Abdel Shafi informed CNN.
The Israeli-Emirati honeymoon has been a whirlwind, however the affair — initially covert — dates again to the mid-1990s, in keeping with a number of media experiences.
Apart from the apparent advantages of shut enterprise ties between two rich international locations, Israel and the UAE share concern about Iranian affect within the area.
Iran has seen its affect develop, significantly for the reason that US-led coalition toppled Iraqi chief Saddam Hussein in 2003. Tehran backs to various levels the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and highly effective Shia events and militias in Iraq.
Likewise, the fig leaf of Arab unity and solidarity withered up and blew away years in the past. The Palestinian trigger, as soon as sacrosanct, has turn into a nuisance, significantly for the Gulf states.
Israel, as soon as the official arch-nemesis of the Arab states, has been changed by one other.
“Both the US and Israel want Arab countries to think their main enemy is Iran,” says veteran Palestinian activist and legislator Mustafa Barghouti, commenting on Emirati-Israeli normalization.
The UAE, nonetheless, insists its normalization settlement with Israel will profit the Palestinians. The accord, says Emirati Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed, “will enable us to continue to stand by the Palestinian people, and realize their hopes for an independent state within a stable and prosperous region.”
The Gulf monarchies have at all times been cautious of the Palestinians. They wanted expert Palestinians to construct their international locations and educate their kids within the early years of the oil increase, however had been by no means comfy with the revolutionary ideologies many Palestinians introduced with them.
Not way back within the Arab world there was a modicum of unanimity on the primacy of the Palestinian trigger. The Arab League endorsed the late Saudi King Abdullah’s 2002 Arab peace initiative which supplied full normalization of ties with Israel in trade for an Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied within the 1967 conflict.
That initiative is all however lifeless. With Palestinians divided between an remoted Hamas ruling Gaza and an getting old, aid-dependent Palestinian Authority with restricted sway in elements of the West Bank, each pitted in opposition to an Israel that has loved, particularly for the final 4 years, a clean test from Washington, help for the Palestinians may appear to be a waste to many Arab regimes.
Wary of Iran, the UAE is following within the footsteps of President Donald Trump, who in his inauguration made clear he was placing his nation, the United States, first. Narrow self-interest has crushed out outdated alliances and causes. Trump’s days as president are numbered, however his doctrine has discovered fertile floor within the Gulf.
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