Is peace at hand in the Middle East?
Having presided over the recognition of Israel by the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, President Donald Trump has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize amid talk of peace breaking out across the region.
Assuredly, this is a major diplomatic breakthrough, and Nancy’s Pelosi’s sourgrapes dismissal of the deal as a “distraction” testifies to that truth.
Recognition of Israel by the UAE and Bahrain will, it is predicted, be followed by recognition of Israel by Oman and other Gulf states, perhaps even Saudi
Arabia. But the idea that peace is at hand appears to be, as Mark Twain said of reports of his death, premature.
Indeed, the Gulf Arabs could be signing up to recognize Israel because they see the Jewish state as an indispensable ally in the Arab Sunni clash with the larger and more powerful Shiite Iran.
In 1979, the Camp David Accords were signed in a land-for-peace deal whereby Israel returned the Sinai, captured in the 1967 Six-day War, to Egypt. Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin both won the Nobel Prize for Peace. Yet, while peace was established between
Cairo and Jerusalem, that did not inaugurate an era of peace.
Jordan’s King Hussein recognized Israel in 1994. Yet, since then, Israel has fought wars with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Palestinians of the West Bank in successive intifadas.
The Palestinian issue also seems no closer to resolution.
What the Gulf Arabs are saying with these recognitions is that the seemingly irreconcilable PalestinianIsraeli conflict can no longer be permitted to interfere with the Arabs’ pursuit of allies in the conflict that more immediate