In Middle East, a new sign of hope
I was Googling around the other day for a factoid: How many Israelis had visited the United Arab Emirates since the signing of their normalization agreement, known as the Abraham Accords. Answer: more than 130,000.
Jumping Jehoshaphat, Batman! In the middle of a global pandemic, at least 130,000 Israeli tourists and investors have flown to Dubai and Abu Dhabi since commercial air travel was established in mid- October!
I believed from the start that the openings between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan — forged by Jared Kushner and Donald Trump — could be game-changing. We are still in the early phase, though, and having lived through the shotgun marriage and divorce of Israelis and Lebanese Christians in the 1980s, I will wait a bit before sending wedding gifts.
That caveat aside, something big seems to be stirring. Unlike the peace breakthroughs between Israel and Egypt, Israel and Lebanon’s Christians and Israel and Jordan, which were driven from the top and largely confined there, the openings between Israel and the Gulf States — while initiated from the top to build an alliance against Iran — are now being driven even more from the bottom, by tourists, students and businesses.
A new Hebrew language school that holds classes in Dubai and Abu Dhabi has been swamped with Emiratis wanting to study in Israel or do business there. Israel’s Mekorot National Water Co. just finalized a deal to provide Bahrain with desalination technology for brackish water. The Times of Israel recently ran an article about Elli Kriel in Dubai, who “has become the go-to kosher chef in the UAE . ... Last year, Kriel launched Kosherati, which sells koshercertified Emirati cuisine, as well as fusion Jewish-emirati dishes.” And, by the way, those 130,000 Israeli visitors helped to save the UAE’S tourist industry from being crushed by the pandemic during the crucial holiday season.
If the Abraham Accords do thrive and broaden to include normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, we are talking about one of the most significant realignments in modern Middle East history, which for many decades was largely shaped by Great Power interventions and Arab-israeli dynamics. Not anymore.
Today, “there are three powerful nonarab actors in the region — Iran, Turkey
I am disappointed to see Michael Stammel, who is the Rensselaer mayor, a county legislator and chairperson of the Rensselaer County Legislature, twice veto attempts by the city’s Common Council to have a public hearing and pass a law to prohibit a single individual from simultaneously holding elective office in the city and the county.
This law is necessary as a matter of fairness to avoid the perception of conflicts of interest and as a matter of separation of powers and appropriate checks and balances between and within governmental bodies. Stammel serving in these roles presents a slippery slope with severe negative implications for municipal self-governance and home rule. It also unnecessarily and embarrassingly tarnishes the image and reputation of the city and the county. Moreover, this arrangement dangerously concentrates a great deal of legislative and executive power in a single individual, almost unchecked.
The residents of the city are paying one person twice for half of the work. Truly troublesome and unfair is that if Stammel recuses himself from a county matter due to serving in these positions, the city goes unrepresented, because we have only one representative in the county legislature. Matters that cause recusal are likely to be the most important — property tax assessments, critical infrastructure funding and shared-services agreements. It smacks of taxation without representation.
Kevin Kerwin Rensselaer