How the Gulf States Got in Bed With Israel and Forgot About the Palestinian
Cause
Benjamin Netanyahu is building ties with anti-Iran Arab
leaders from Riyadh to Doha and betting that a peace deal is no
longer a necessary prerequisite for normalizing diplomatic ties.
By Dalia
Hatuqa
Foreign Policy,
March 28, 2019
Israeli Culture and Sport Minister
Miri Regev (C), Mohamed Bin Thaaloob al-Derai, President of UAE
Wrestling Judo, and
Kickboxing Federation (L) and International Judo Federation
President Marius Vizer (R) chat during the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam
Judo tournament in the Emirati capital Abu Dhabi on October 27,
2018. (STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images)
The much-touted Warsaw summit in February accomplished very
little. The United States tried to persuade its European allies
to abandon the Iran nuclear deal and to push for further
sanctions on Tehran, neither of which happened. The only
excitement came from Israel and some Persian Gulf states which
did not shy away from flaunting their open alliance against
Iran.
Foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia,
and Bahrain sat alongside Benjamin Netanyahu at the grand
opening dinner. It was supposed to be a closed meeting but
Netanyahu leaked a video of the gathering anyway, where
Bahrain’s top official was heard calling Iran the main obstacle
to solving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. The
UAE’s foreign minister was also shown defending Israel’s “right”
to bomb targets in Syria. The love fest was, as U.S. Vice
President Mike Pence noted, “a new era.”
Then there was the handshake between Netanyahu and Oman’s
foreign minister and a brief interaction with Yemen’s foreign
minister, all of which have become part of the prime minister’s
charm offensive ahead of the April 9 elections in Israel.
Netanyahu’s promise to bring ever closer ties with Arab states
has seen him make visits to places like Chad and Oman, as he
grows more eager to show that a Palestinian state is no longer a
prerequisite for formalizing ties with Muslim and Arab states in
the region.
|
Netanyahu’s promise to bring ever closer ties with Arab
states has seen him make visits to places like Chad and
Oman, as he grows more eager to show that a Palestinian
state is no longer a prerequisite for formalizing ties
with Muslim and Arab states in the region. |
Israel has long thought of itself as a democratic oasis
battling numerous enemies in an unstable region. This trope was
best encapsulated in the use of not-so-coded language by Ehud
Barak, the former prime minister, when he famously likened
Israel to a villa in the jungle.
But Netanyahu seems to have embraced some of these very same
enemies, shoring up his base ahead of the elections by claiming
that Israel is no longer the regional pariah it once was. He’s
attempted to find common ground with these former foes through
mutual disdain toward Iran and shared business interests, in the
hope that those commonalities will outweigh the benefits of Arab
solidarity with the Palestinians. The Saudis and other Gulf
states, which at one point famously championed the Palestinian
cause not only at home but also to their Western counterparts,
have reversed course over time.
The new relationship between the Gulf and Israel is part of a
larger shift that the administration of U.S. President Donald
Trump is trying to spearhead, whereby regional Sunni Arab states
openly align themselves with Israel in opposition to Iran. The
White House sees a watered-down Israeli-Palestinian peace deal
as part of this process.
Before leaving for Chad on Jan. 20, Netanyahu called his
visit, which marked the resumption of diplomatic relations
between the two countries after they were severed in 1972, “part
of the revolution that we are doing in the Arab and Islamic
worlds; I promised you that this would happen. … There will be
more countries,” he vowed. He has similarly been forthcoming in
disclosing Israel’s not-so-secret ties with the “sons
of Ishmael” all the while continuing to declare that not a
single West Bank settler would be forced to leave on his watch.
In October 2018, Netanyahu visited Oman and met with its ruler,
Sultan Qaboos, using it as one more opportunity to boost his
argument that Israeli settlements, occupation, and siege of the
Palestinians are no hindrance to forging ties with the Arab
world. Netanyahu also recently boasted that Israeli passenger
planes could fly over
Oman and Sudan, (and an Israel-bound flight even flew over
Saudi Arabia last March), racking up yet another win for his
regional integration effort.
|
In October 2018, Netanyahu visited Oman and met with its
ruler, Sultan Qaboos, using it as one more opportunity
to boost his argument that Israeli settlements,
occupation, and siege of the Palestinians are no
hindrance to forging ties with the Arab world. |
Last year, an Israeli delegation visited Bahrain for a
conference organized by UNESCO (ironically, the same United
Nations organization defunded and
abandoned by the United States over alleged anti-Israel
bias). There are no diplomatic relations with the Gulf kingdom,
but like its neighbors who are concerned about Iran, Bahrain has
inched closer to forging overt ties with Israel. In May 2018,
its foreign minister tweeted about Israel’s right to defend
itself after Iranian missiles were lobbed at targets in the
occupied Golan Heights from Syria. In December 2017, an
interfaith Bahraini delegation that did not include any
government officials made headlines when it visited
Jerusalem—just days after Trump announced his decision to
recognize the holy city as Israel’s capital.
The UAE and Israel have had a working relationship
for decades, spanning defense, technology and agriculture.
But in October 2018, the UAE went a step further, allowing
Israel’s national anthem to be played at a judo tournament in
Abu Dhabi as a tearful Israeli sports minister presented a medal
to Sagi Muki, who won gold at the competition. Saudi Arabia’s
permissive attitude to informal relations is more recent. It
began after the death of King Abdullah in 2015 and with the
ascension of Mohammed bin Salman to his post of crown prince in
2017.
Riyadh’s aspiration to reach a similar detente with Israel
renders the Arab Peace Initiative it put forth almost two
decades ago almost irrelevant.
