Israel, UAE deal halts annexation plans
New accord a major breakthrough for Trump ahead of election, although discord remains about status of Mideast plan
Israel and the United Arab Emirates announced yesterday they were establishing full diplomatic relations in a US-brokered deal that required Israel to halt its contentious plan to annex occupied West Bank land sought by the Palestinians. The deal delivered a key foreign policy victory to US President Donald Trump as he seeks re-election and reflected a changing Middle East in which shared concerns about Iran have largely overtaken traditional Arab support for the Palestinians. A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the deal amounted to “treason”, and should be reversed. The agreement makes the UAE the third Arab country, after Egypt and Jordan, to have full diplomatic ties with Israel. They announced it in a joint statement, saying deals between Israel and the UAE were expected in the coming weeks in such areas as tourism, direct flights and embassies. Trump called the deal “a truly historic moment”. “Now that the ice has been broken I expect more Arab and Muslim countries will follow the United Arab Emirates,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. In a nationally televised news conference, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed Trump’s remarks. “Today we usher in a new era of peace between Israel and the Arab world,” he said. “There is a good chance we will soon see more Arab countries joining this expanding circle of peace.” But Netanyahu said the annexation plan was on “temporary hold”, contradicting Emirati officials who said it was off the table. Emirati officials described the deal in pragmatic terms. Anwar Gargash, a top Emirati official, said they had dealt a “death blow” to an aggressive Israeli move and hoped to help reshape the region. “Is it perfect? Nothing is perfect in a very difficult region,” Gargash added. “But I think we used our political chips right.” The UAE, like most of the Arab world, has rejected diplomatic ties with Israel in the absence of a peace deal establishing a Palestinian state on lands captured by Israel in 1967. That steadfast support for the Palestinians, however, has begun to weaken in recent years, in large part because of the shared enmity toward Iran and Iranian proxies in the region. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the day-to-day ruler of the UAE, also shares Israel’s distrust of Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Gaza Strip’s ruling Hamas militant group. Netanyahu has long boasted about fostering closer behind-the-scenes ties with Arab countries than publicly acknowledged. The UAE has made little secret of those budding ties, allowing Israeli businessmen to enter the country on foreign passports and welcoming Israeli officials and sporting figures. Still, the timing of the deal was unexpected, and perhaps tied to the upcoming US election. For Trump, it gave an important boost to a president trailing in opinion polls and facing heavy criticism for his handling of the coronavirus crisis. Israel and the UAE are among Trump’s few close international allies, and yesterday’s deal may have been seen as an election gift. US-Israeli author Joel Rosenberg, who met with the crown prince in 2018 alongside fellow evangelical Christians, said the announcement could influence religious voters who may “struggle to decide” between Trump and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. In a statement, Biden praised Israel for freezing the annexation plan. “The United Arab Emirates and Israel have pointed a path toward a more peaceful, stable Middle East,” he said, adding a Biden presidency “will seek to build on this progress”. Netanyahu chalked up a diplomatic victory at a time when he has seen his popularity plummet as the country grapples with a renewed coronavirus outbreak, mass street protests and skyrocketing unemployment as the result of earlier lockdown measures. His shaky coalition government has been plagued by infighting and faces the possibility of early elections, and he faces a corruption trial over charges stemming from a series of scandals. All in all, Netanyahu paid a relatively minor price. Although the future of hoped-for annexation plan is unclear, a half-century status quo remains in place in which Israel maintains its occupation of the West Bank and continues to expand its scores of settlements while Palestinians live in small autonomous enclaves. Those settlements are now home to 500,000 Israelis. The Palestinians claim all of the West Bank, captured in the 1967 Mideast war, as the heartland of a future state. The Trump Mideast plan envisions granting Israel permanent control over 30 per cent of that territory, while offering the Palestinians limited autonomy in the remainder. The Palestinians have rejected Trump’s Mideast plan outright. Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, convened a meeting of his top leadership yesterday, and afterward his spokesman Nabil Abu Rdeneh, said the agreement amounted to “treason”. He said the UAE must reverse the decision and urged other Arab countries not to follow suit “at the expense of Palestinian rights”. In Gaza, Hamas called the deal a “stabbing in the back of our people”. Moving to head off the Palestinian criticism, UAE officials said the deal had prevented the annexation and kept hopes alive for Palestinian statehood. “The UAE is using its gravitas and promise of a relationship to unscrew a time bomb that is threatening a twostate solution,” Gargash said.