“HUGE breakthrough today,” crowed Donald Trump on twitter
as he announced the new peace deal between Israel and the United Arab
Emirates (UAE). The deal makes the UAE the first Gulf Arab state and the
third Arab nation, after Egypt and Jordan, to have diplomatic ties with
Israel. But the new Israel-UAE partnership should fool no one. Though
it will supposedly stave off Israeli annexation of the West Bank and
encourage tourism and trade between both countries, in reality, it is
nothing more than a scheme to give an Arab stamp of approval to Israel’s
status quo of land theft, home demolitions, arbitrary extrajudicial
killings, apartheid laws, and other abuses of Palestinian
rights.
The deal should be seen in the context of over three years
of Trump administration policies that have tightened Israel’s grip on
the Palestinians: moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem,
recognizing the Golan Heights as Israeli territory, and creating a
so-called peace plan with no Palestinian participation or input. While
no U.S. administration has successfully brokered a resolution to
Israel’s now 53-year-long occupation, the Trump years have been
especially detrimental to the Palestinian cause. Palestinian leader Hanan Ashrawi wrote on Twitter
that with this deal, “Israel got rewarded for not declaring openly what
it’s been doing to Palestine illegally & persistently since the
beginning of the occupation.” Indeed, with Donald Trump at the helm and
son-in-law Jared Kushner as the primary strategist, even concessions for
Palestinians have been done away with. To add insult to injury, while
the deal had been couched in terms of a commitment by Israel to suspend
annexation of Palestinian territories, in his Israeli press conference
announcing the deal, Netanyahu said annexation was “still on the table” and that it was something he is “committed to.”
Among the most brutal aspects of this period for
Palestinians have been the loss of support for their cause in
neighboring Arab states. The Arab political party in Israel, Balad, said
that by signing this pact, “the UAE has officially joined Israel
against Palestine, and placed itself in the camp of the enemies of the
Palestinian people.”
The UAE has previously held a position consistent with
public opinion in Gulf and Middle East countries that the acceptance of
formal diplomatic relations with Israel should only take place in
exchange for a just peace and in accordance with international law. Back
in June, Emirati ambassador to the U.S. Yousef al-Otaiba penned an an op-ed
in the Yediot Ahronot newspaper, the Israeli equivalent to U.S.A Today,
appealing directly in Hebrew for Israel not to annex the West Bank.
However, by working out an agreement with Trump and Netanyahu to
normalize relations, the country has now made itself Israel’s partner in
cementing de facto annexation and ongoing apartheid.
The UAE’s change from supporting Palestinian dignity and
freedom to supporting Israel’s never-ending occupation is a calculated
move by UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, a shrewd Middle East
dictator who uses his country’s military and financial resources to
thwart moves towards democracy and respect for human rights under the
guise of fighting Islamic terrorism. His support for Israel cements his
relationship with the Trump administration. Trump has already gone out
of his way to push billions of dollars in arms sales to the UAE, despite
opposition from Congress because of high number of civilian casualties
associated with the use of those weapons in Yemen.
Secretary Pompeo has also defended the UAE from credible reports that
U.S. weapons sold to the UAE have been transferred in Yemen to groups
linked to Al Qaeda, hardline Salafi militias and Yemeni separatists. The
UAE was also stung by revelations
of secret prisons it had been operating in Yemen where prisoners were
subjected to horrific forms of torture, including “the grill,” where
victims were “tied to a spit like a roast and spun in a circle of fire.”
In Libya, the UAE has been criticized
for violating a 2011 UN Security Council arms embargo by supplying
combat equipment to the LAAF, the armed group commanded by General
Khalifa Haftar with a well-established record of human right abuses. So
this deal with Israel gives the UAE a much-needed veneer of
respectability.
But it is impossible to understand the impetus for this
deal without putting it in the context of the ongoing hostilities
between all three countries and Iran. Following the old adage that “the
enemy of my enemy is my friend,” in recent years Israel has been
negotiating with various Gulf states, including the UAE, to push back
against Iran’s growing influence in the region. As the communique
announcing the Israeli-UAE deal asserted,
the U.S., Israel and the UAE “share a similar outlook regarding threats
in the region.” This dovetails with Trump’s anti-Iran obsession, which
includes withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and his “maximum
pressure” campaign designed to force Iran back to the negotiating table
to make a “better deal.” In announcing the UAE-Israeli pact, Trump declared
with ridiculous bravado that if he wins the elections, he’ll have a new
deal with Iran within 30 days. Anyone who believes this must be almost
as delusional as Trump.
The fact that this agreement between two Middle East
countries was first announced thousands of miles away in Washington DC
shows how it is more about shoring up Trump’s slumping electoral
campaign and improving Netanyahu’s battered image in Israel than
bringing peace to the Middle East. It also shows that Netanyahu and bin
Zayed have a stake in seeing Trump win a second term in the White House.
Instead of pointing out the hollowness of the pact, Joe Biden’s
response was unfortunately to congratulate Israel and the UAE and try to
take credit for the deal. “I personally spent time with leaders of both
Israel and the U.A.E. during our administration, building the case for
cooperation and broader engagement,” he said. “I am gratified by today’s
announcement.”
The normalization of relations between the UAE and Israel,
facilitated by the U.S., serves to prop up three repressive leaders —
Trump, Netanyahu, and bin Zayed — and will cause further harm to
Palestinians. It is both a shame and a sham.
*
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This article was originally published on CODEPINK.
Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Ariel Gold is the national co-director and Senior Middle East Policy Analyst with CODEPINK for Peace.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Medea Benjamin and Ariel Gold, Global Research, 2020
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