Two Arab countries recognizing Israel in just one month is a rare historic event. First it was the United Arab Emirates, now it is Bahrain. Just think that when the Jewish State celebrated 70 years in 2018, it maintained diplomatic relations in the Arab world only with Egypt and Jordan (Mauritania once recognized Israel, then retreated) to understand the scope of what is happening and that it is very more than mere political victories by Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, and Donald Trump, the American president who has been his patron throughout the normalization process with Sunni countries in the Middle East.
After Anwar al-Sadat signed the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, the taboo was broken: the Jewish state could be recognized by an Arab neighbor even though the question of a homeland for the Palestinians was unresolved. Then, in 1994, it was Jordan’s turn.
In both cases, the decisions of the rulers involved a great deal of courage. In the case of Sadat, he was even murdered by Islamic fundamentalists two years later, while King Hussein only dared to take that step, taking into account the majority of Palestinians living in the kingdom, because a year before Yasser Arafat’s own PLO had negotiated with Israel. There were also prizes at stake: Egypt was recovering Sinai, lost to Israel in the Six Day War (1967), Jordan was once again gaining the confidence of the West after having supported the invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi troops.
In the case of both Israel with Egypt and Israel with Jordan, the presidents of the United States, first Jimmy Carter and then Bill Clinton, have always played a key role in normalization. And the same is now happening with Trump, who never hid his ambition to end the Israeli-Arab conflict and gave the fieldwork to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, Ivanka’s husband. From a Jewish family and with Holocaust surviving grandparents, Kushner as a mediator in the Middle East initially appeared to be a mere case of nepotism or at best a bet on a well-meaning naive, but the results are beginning to give him some credit.
With Barack Obama, after Trump was elected, ordering the American ambassador to the United Nations not to veto a resolution condemning Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Trump barely took office was seen as the best of allies in Israel. After all, the United States was once again having a president who is unconditional in supporting Israel. And he saw in an alliance between Israelis and Sunni Arabs the best barrier against the expansion of Shi’ite Iran’s power, which both Trump and Netanyahu do not believe they have given up on looking for the nuclear weapon.
For those who like to be attentive to the signs of the changing world, Trump’s direct flight from Saudi Arabia, the first country visited as president in 2017, to Israel was revealing. Mohammed bin Salman, son and heir to King Salman, not only buys weapons in massive quantities from the United States, but understands the American strategy of building an anti-regime bloc of ayatollahs. Then, MBS, as it is known, publicly defended that the Israelis have the right to live in peace in their land.
Attention, this does not mean that Saudi Arabia is the next Arab country to recognize Israel. Being the guardian of Mecca and Medina, the two holy cities of Islam, forces the decision to weigh heavily, as the Palestinian cause remains popular among the Muslim masses. But no one believes that the United Arab Emirates, great allies of the Saudis, or Bahrain, whose Sunni monarch rules a majority Shi’ite people with Saudi military aid, would dare to step up diplomatic relations without the endorsement of the big regional brother.
In terms of betting on a next Arab country to start normalizing relations with Israel, in addition to Oman, Morocco is a credible name. A large number of Israelis come from Morocco and have always maintained ties, Hassan II and Mohammed VI have always trusted the Jew André Azoulay as an advisor. And there is a very important gain for Morocco that could come from an understanding with Israel: the recognition by the United States of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. It is known that there is a lobby Jewish to act in this direction with the Trump administration and that the moment is favorable because Morocco is in a position of strength in the former Spanish colony, several African countries have opened consulates in Laayoune and the Polisario increasingly depends on the support of Algeria for its independence struggle .
And the Palestinians in all this? First of all, they are victims of their divisions, Hamas governing Gaza, Palestinian Authority (basically the PLO or Fatah of the late Arafat) governing the West Bank. Islamist project on the one hand, secular nationalist project on the other. And Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader recognized by the international community, has shown little ability to attract support in the United States or to negotiate with Israel, where the nationalist right is dominant and little available for compromise. With the two-state solution postponed, and with any other solution made impossible by demography (a democratic Jewish state like the current one with a majority of Arabs in the population is impossible), Netanyahu and Trump, with funding from the Sunni Gulf countries, try to captivate the Palestinians with economic incentives and a slightly more normal coexistence than the existing one. The prosperity of the 20% of Israeli citizens who are Arabs serves as a decoy, goodwill gestures such as turning a blind eye to Palestinians who illegally crossed the border to go to the beach in Tel Aviv this summer are punctual experiences.
However, it cannot be said that the Arab governments have forgotten the Palestinians for good. One of the conditions that the United Arab Emirates imposed for the establishment of relations with Israel was the non-annexation of Palestinian lands under the Trump plan to end the conflict inherited from the 1940s, when the United Nations proposed two states and the countries Arabs refused.
The Palestinian leadership will have to think about how to deal with these diplomatic movements that favor Israel. Increasingly, explicit solidarity with their cause comes only from Iran, a country that has said there are daggers sticking into the backs of the Palestinians. Terrorism, which has been the path of Hamas, has not brought results, the inertia of the Palestinian Authority, although understandable, has not.
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