ARTICLE: After the United Arab Emirates (UAE) accepted the US-sponsored deal to recognise Israel formally by and by, the existing state of informal relations that have existed between the Gulf state and Israel over many years, including visits by Israeli officials to the UAE for sporting events and international conferences, have been boosted by the new development. A phone service has been established between the two new 'friends', trade is on the table for expansion, and the expected meeting between the two sides in the coming weeks will see the signing of investment, tourism, flights and opening embassies agreements. While US President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been crowing about the 'breakthrough', a veritable stampede of recognition of Israel by other Arab countries is very much on the cards. Bahrain, Oman and other unnamed Gulf states (no prizes for guessing who) have been mentioned in this regard, while Israel has high hopes for Sudan to come on board. The UAE's informal cooperation and collaboration with the Zionist state over the years includes the use of the Israeli Pegasus spyware, and now joint coronavirus research has been announced.
It is no surprise that most of the Arab and Muslim world, erstwhile champions of the Palestinian cause, have maintained a diplomatic silence. Only the Palestinians themselves, Turkey and Iran have roundly condemned the move. Pakistan's foreign office has issued a mealy-mouthed statement that fails to do justice to the past of a country that hosted Yasser Arafat at the Lahore Islamic Summit in 1974. But those were braver, heady days. Today the zeitgeist appears to be genuflection towards the powerful and mighty, i.e., an admission of defeat and embrace of servility. One of the perennial myths that have kept our brains in a constant fog is the so-called unity of the Muslim world. In practice, and this is to be expected, national interest almost always inevitably trumps religious solidarity. The Palestinian struggle of course is a national liberation movement including Christian Palestinians (some quite prominent in the movement) and not just a Muslim one. However, the torchbearers of unity of the Muslim Ummah (if at all such a creature exists in any effective sense) should hold themselves accountable for the contradictions between their rhetoric and their practice.
It is another sign of the decline of progressive culture and politics that no Left organisation has uttered even a squeak in protest against the UAE's betrayal. Only the religious right, in the shape of the Milli Yakjehti Council, held rallies of protest in the cities of Pakistan. The Pakistani Left has many sins of omission to its credit. Now one more of abandoning internationalist solidarity can be placed at its doorstep.
If the predicted stampede of states recognising Israel transpires, it will confirm that Saudi Arabia's pregnant silence on the UAE's decision is intended to hold the former's breath until these unknown waters have been thoroughly tested. Of course the changed geopolitical context of the long standing Palestinian struggle indicates that the Arab monarchies are more than willing to follow in Egypt and Jordan's footsteps and sign peace treaties with Israel. The consistent resistance to Israeli occupation of Palestine and aggressive territorial expansion since it was planted as a dagger in the heart of the Middle East came in the past from the Ba'athist regimes in Iraq and Syria. It should not surprise us then that both were 'taken out' by invasion and fanning civil war.
One of the obvious untruths being peddled to 'sell' the UAE deal is that Israel has agreed not to annex territories in the West Bank. That fib was soon exposed by none other than Netanyahu when he said the annexation had been 'suspended', meaning it will be revived at an appropriate moment. The Saudi-led Gulf States are jittery about the US's withdrawal from direct intervention on their behalf in the Middle East. Their rivalry with Iran impels them to seek another security ally in the shape of Israel. Recognition of the Zionist state does not mean lip service to the Palestinian cause will cease. But that is probably all that will be available.
The negotiated peace settlement with Israel touted by the Palestinian leadership after their defeats and expulsion from Jordan (1970) and Lebanon (1991, finally), which spelt the end of armed resistance amid hopes of diplomacy persuading Israel through the good offices of its main backer, Washington, to agree to a two-state solution that would offer the Palestinians a truncated state under Israeli hegemony, is by now in tatters. The Oslo Accords and other agreements in this regard never went further than this. The Palestinian leadership felt it had no choice but to swallow this bitter pill since after it abandoned the armed struggle, it had few other cards to play. The rift between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Hamas was precisely on this question of whether to abandon armed resistance in favour of peaceful protest (the intifada) and diplomacy. The latter has now run its course and left the Palestinians in worse straits than ever.
Unlikely as it seems, these best laid plans of Trump and Netanyahu could well be prove the harbingers of greater trouble rather than the peace of the graveyard they wish to impose on the Palestinians with the help of their fickle Arab and Muslim friends. Given the conditions of daily life and the unremitting oppression of Palestinians peacefully protesting for their rights, Palestine today resembles a tinder box waiting to explode. If tomorrow brings a revival of the armed Palestinian resistance in new forms, the US and Israel and their new-found Arab (and Muslim) friends may well be in for one of those unpredictable surprises history springs every now and again.
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Copyright Business Recorder, 2020