Since the announcement of the normalisation of relations between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel, a few weeks ago, I have received requests from some media outlets and individuals to comment on the development and its implications on the Palestinian cause.
Interestingly, the average observer who follows Middle East politics on only or largely the various international media that allot limited periods for Hausa news programmes misses too much information, which explains his simplistic understanding of the underlying dynamics of the region’s geopolitics.
Anyway, though the protracted Arab-Jews struggle predates 1948 when global powers conspired to create the Zionist State of Israel on Palestinian territories, the 1979 controversial Egypt-Israeli Peace Treaty introduced a whole new dimension to the politics of the struggle.
After four of the five major wars between Arabs and Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973, Egypt, the most populous and arguably strongest Arab country, began to come to terms with the fact that a war with Israel was/is effectively a war with the global military powers combined, given the Euro-American countries’ resolve to keep Israel militarily and technologically superior to the entire Arab countries.
So, in 1979 and following years of pressure and blackmail in the name of US-brokered Egypt-Israel negotiations, Egypt recognized the State of Israel and normalised relations with it, while it, in return, retrieved its Sinai Peninsula from the Israeli occupation.
Though Egypt’s decision provoked its fellow Arab countries, which consequently expelled it from their Arab League organization, it (i.e Egypt’s decision) prompted individual countries in the region to begin looking at the struggle from, primarily, the perspectives of their respective national interests.
In less than a decade afterwards, Arab countries restored diplomatic relations with Egypt while its membership in the Arab League was formally restored in 1989.
And by the mid-90s, the Palestinians themselves had recognised the State of Israel under the Oslo Accords 1&2 based on the United Nation’s two-state solution to the conflict. Consequently, a quasi-autonomous Palestinian “state” in West Bank and Gaza Strip was created as a step supposedly designed to culminate in the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state.
Soon afterwards, Palestinian political elite including those of the supposed armed resistance groups e.g. Hamas began struggling for the leadership of their quasi-autonomous Palestinian “state” based on either formal recognition of the State of Israel, as in the case of, say, Fatah, or tacit recognition, as in the case of, say, Hamas, as provided under the Oslo Accords that established the whole political process. And since then those of them in “power” have always enjoyed power-associated privileges including diplomatic treatment around the world, while their political opponents are always determined to take over their positions as in any typical democratic state.
In fact, since 2007, the two major components of the quasi-autonomous Palestinian “state”, West Bank and Gaza, have been politically separate following a desperate power struggle between Fatah and Hamas that led to the violent overthrow of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in Gaza by the Hamas fighters; and since then the city has been under Hamas control.
Meanwhile, while Fatah openly interacts with Israel based on formal recognition, Hamas, which “insists” on not recognising Israel, does the same albeit largely through Qatar and Turkey.
On the social level also, when Israel was created in 1948 many Palestinians opted for recognizing it by willingly taking its citizenship; they now constitute more than 20% of the Israeli population.
Besides, on a daily basis, thousands of Palestinian labourers cross into Israel through its border crossings to work, which equally suggests their, at least, tacit recognition of the State of Israel; and given the chance, they wouldn’t hesitate to take Israeli citizenship. Interesting, many of them work on construction sites including the settlements that successive Israeli governments have been building on the very territories of the proposed State of Palestine in blatant defiance of the relevant UN resolutions.
Anyway, in 1994, Jordan also signed a US-brokered peace treaty recognising the State of Israel and normalising relations with it. And in 1996, a year following the overthrow of the then Emir of Qatar by his son, the former Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani who is the father of the current emir, Sheikh Tamim, Qatar and Oman openly established relations with Israel when they respectively invited the then Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres to Doha and Muscat where agreements were signed between the two countries respectively and Israel.
Also, whether it was a mere coincidence or not, the same year witnessed the establishment of the Doha-based Aljazeera satellite channel, which was the first Arabian television channel to host Zionist leaders, politicians, and even military spokesmen who promote propaganda that undermines the established narrative of the root cause of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which was the illegal occupation of the former’s land by the latter. And since then the sight of Zionist officials on Arab TV channels has become normal.
Now, Mauritania equally recognised Israel in 1999 and established diplomatic ties with it. And though the UAE is the latest Arab country to follow suit, it’s an open secret that there have always been secretive direct or indirect contacts between Israel and literally all Middle Eastern countries.
Meanwhile Turkey, which, along with Iran and Israel are the only non-Arab countries in the region, and which recognised Israel since 1949, a year after its (Israeli) creation that made it the first Muslim country to do so, has maintained diplomatic, economic, military and other strategic ties with Israel.
Whereas since 1979, following the Khomeini revolution in Iran, Israel and Iran have manipulated their mutually beneficial “enmity” at the expense of the Palestinian cause and indeed the entire Arab countries in the region.
In conclusion this Friday, I will, God willing, highlight how Iran and Israel exploit the Palestinian cause in their mutually beneficial “enmity” to achieve their respective goals without actually undermining each another; and, of course, look at the underlying interests and dynamics behind the tendency of normalising relations with Israel among Arab countries.
