Is the UAE's call for Israel rapprochement a betrayal of Palestinians?

Since the beginning of Israel’s founding in Palestine, which is part of the larger Arab world, almost all of the 22 Arab states have had serious problems with the presence of the Zionist state in the Middle East.

But that unified stance has changed in recent years with Saudi Arabia and the UAE abandoning their longstanding position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in pursuit of winning favours from US President Donald Trump, a strong supporter of Israel.

Both Saudi and the UAE are trying to complicate the Palestinian question by recognising Tel Aviv and indirectly advocating for creating a pro-Zionist Arab bloc, striking a major blow to Palestinian aspirations. 

"Many, many years ago, when there was an Arab decision not to have contact with Israel, that was a very, very wrong decision, looking back," said Anwar Gargash, the UAE Foreign Minister, during an appearance in Abu Dhabi.

Gargash also regrets the lack of communication between Israel and Arab states, saying: “Because clearly, you have to really dissect and divide between having a political issue and keeping your lines of communication open.” 

The Saudi-UAE-led Gulf rapprochement to Israel is not the first Arab contact with Tel Aviv. Since 1979, Egypt has had formal ties with Israel, while Jordan established relations with the Zionist state after signing a peace treaty in 1994. 

It appears now other oil-rich Gulf countries are in line to have formal connections with Israel. Oman, another Gulf state, also welcomed Israel’s hardliner Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an unexpected visit in October.

"The strategic shift is needed actually for us to progress on the peace front," Gargash said, excusing ties with Israel. 

But for Israel, which has won battles against several Arab states since 1948, the latest submission coming from the Gulf means that they do not need any peace process to clarify the status of Palestinians, providing a statehood.  

In the face of the UEA top diplomat’s submissive remarks, Netanyahu might feel freer than ever to act against Palestinians. 

“The Arab citizens have 22 nation states around them and they do not need another,” Netanyahu said on March 10, recommending Palestinians to leave Israel for good and to choose a location among the existing Arab states. 

“Israel is the national state, not of all its citizens, but only of the Jewish people,” he also recently said, exposing his increasingly racist language toward Palestinians as the crucial April elections are fast-approaching. 

Israel’s recent controversial nation-state law has already revealed Netanyahu’s racist dream asserting that in the holy land only Jewish people have an exclusive right to self-determination. 

With the so-called the deal of the century, the Trump administration has already given signs that the Palestinian presence will be decreased to lesser conditions as Israeli occupation will be gaining more approval from Washington. 

Gulf embraces Zionism

Richard Falk, an international law professor and an American Jewish expert on the Palestinian conflict, says that Tel Aviv is currently encouraged by Trump’s “unconditional support” of Israel and feels no pressure from the international community to comply with humanitarian norms observed by the UN or other organisations. 

Israelis is now confident that “diplomacy is dead and the conflict will end with the one side winning and the other side losing. It’s a kind of victory scenario Zionist lobbies in the US are also promoting,” Falk told TRT World in a previous interview.

Apparently, the UAE’s Gargash also wants to subscribe to this Zionist ‘scenario’ of complete victory, signalling a willingness to be enablers of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. 

In his latest speech, Gargash submitted that there will be no Palestinian state in the future side by side with Israel, agreeing with Netanyahu’s approach that Palestinians could only have individual rights in Israel, not a state at all. 

“I think 10 to 15 years, the discussion will be what is the nature of the Israeli state, what are the rights of the Palestinians within that Israeli state,” Gargash said, embracing the Zionist stance.

Gargash thinks so “because a two-state solution will no longer be feasible because a sort of reduced rump state will no longer be practical”.

Recent developments also show how the Gulf has become supportive of the Trump-Netanyahu alliance, which aims to undermine Muslim Arab causes in the Middle East. 

The UAE and Saudi Arabia have been recently been courted by Jared Kushner, an Orthodox Jewish American and a strong supporter of Netanyahu, who is also Trump’s son-in-law and his advisor in the White House. 

Trump has recently recognised Israeli sovereignty over Syria’s Golan Heights occupied by the Jewish state since 1967, aiming to help Tel Aviv gain another Arab land. 

The move has also signalled that the next American recognition could be over the occupied-West Bank and other Palestinian territories, leaving the possibility of a Palestinian statehood in a complete peril.