Netanyahu switches legacy achievements
JERUSALEM — For 16 months, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had doggedly pursued a right-wing dream that he saw as securing his legacy: annexing West Bank territory that the Palestinians counted on for a future state, potentially dealing a death blow to a two-state solution.
On Thursday, with his annexation plan running aground, Netanyahu abruptly walked away from it. Instead, he exulted in a potential legacy achievement of an entirely different character — one that, unlike annexation, could only improve Israel’s ties with the West and much of the Arab world.
The announcement in Washington that the United Arab Emirates had agreed to a ‘‘full normalization of relations’’ with Israel in exchange for Netanyahu’s agreement to ‘‘suspend’’ his annexation push amounted to a breathtaking turnabout for the veteran Israeli premier.
His drive for sovereignty on the West Bank had pushed Netanyahu into a corner: He was hectored by European leaders, rebuffed by his coalition partners, and distracted from a pandemic that was rapidly spiraling out of his control, even as the goal of annexation seemed ever more elusive.
But the agreement with the Emiratis allowed Netanyahu, who has craved a historic achievement to cap his tenure as Israel’s longest-serving leader, to rank himself alongside Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin, forerunners who struck peace accords with the nation’s former bitter enemies, Egypt and Jordan.
The agreement allows the UAE, too, to enhance its international standing, which has been deeply damaged over its central role in a war that has turned Yemen into a humanitarian disaster, and over its proxy role in the conflict ravaging Libya.
By making an end to annexation the price for bringing into the open a robust diplomatic relationship that had long been one of the Middle East’s worst-kept secrets, the UAE could now boast that it was coming to the rescue of the Palestinians, rather than selling them out.
‘‘The cancellation of annexation is merely an excuse for the Emirates,’’ said Shimrit Meir, an Israeli analyst of the Arab world. ‘‘This was in the stars for a long time. And framing it as their success in blocking annexation, and as a quid pro quo, makes Palestinian and Arab criticism less harsh.’’
No more than a statement of intent for now, the Israel-uae agreement, announced by President Donald Trump, calls for bilateral talks that could eventually produce such concrete achievements as economic relations, collaboration in science and technology, direct flights for Israelis to shop in Dubai or Emirati Muslims to pray at Al-aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, and the opening of embassies in Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv, if presumably not Jerusalem.
Dennis Ross, a former Middle East negotiator for Republican and Democratic administrations, said that another lure for the Emiratis was the possibility of obtaining advanced weaponry it has long sought, which the United States sells only to countries that are at peace with Israel, to preserve its qualitative military edge in the region.
‘‘It doesn’t mean the limits are gone, but they’re more favorable,’’ Ross said. He said he would expect the UAE to get weapons such as advanced drones.
Ross said that the Emiratis had pressed for the agreement with Israel after concluding that Netanyahu was bent on annexation. ‘‘Nothing could stop Netanyahu except Trump, so they had to give Trump a reason to say no,’’ he said. ‘‘And normalization did the trick.’’
Skeptics noted that Israel and the UAE had never faced one another in battle, and that their relations had long since ceased to look like those of enemies: The Emiratis have hosted Israeli ministers and athletes, and they invited Israel to the Dubai Expo 2020, which was delayed until 2021 because of the pandemic.
‘‘It’s an agreement to partially normalize ties between two countries who already have partially normalized ties,’’ Ofer Zalzberg, an analyst at International Crisis Group, wrote on Twitter. ‘‘Annexation is suspended in order to formalize & publicize those ties.’’