Bibi saw the promised land... but Bennett walks into history
THE TIMING was intriguing as Naftali Bennett arrived in Abu Dhabi this week. It wasn’t specifically meant to be on the day he completed six months in office, but it’s not entirely coincidental either. He wasn’t the Israeli leader who signed the Abraham Accords peace deals with a number of Arab states; that was his predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu. But he was the first Israeli prime minister to visit the UAE.
When Israel signed its first peace agreements with the Arab states Egypt and Jordan, the leaders visited each other’s countries at the beginning of the process. Business ties and tourism would come later, with the exception of Israeli holiday-makers flocking to the beaches of Sinai. In fact, business and tourism have still yet to come anywhere to their potential, and the relationships between Israel and its Egyptian and Jordanian neighbours are still rather frosty.
With the Emiratis, it has been the other way around. First came the private jets with the investors and deal-makers, and then the passenger airliners with hundreds of thousands of tourists. There are eight daily flights right now between Ben Gurion and Dubai airports, and that’s even before the massive Emirates airline has got in on the action. Only then came the politicians. Mr Bennett’s visit took place over a year after the Abraham Accords were signed. And that was just fine.
It’s not that Mr Netanyahu didn’t want to claim for himself the title of first Israeli prime minister to openly visit the UAE – he was so eager, he forbade his cabinet members from flying there on ministerial business before he had a chance to go. The Emirati leadership was happy to push ahead on all other matters, even exempting Israelis from the need to obtain visas in advance. However, they gently yet firmly pushed off their reception for Mr Netanyahu until he was no longer in office and it became irrelevant.
It wasn’t anything personal. They would have happily hosted him and had already done so secretly in the past. It was simply the timing. The Emirates are just about the furthest thing from a democracy that you could imagine, but that doesn’t mean they don’t understand what elections mean for other countries. As Israel geared up for its fourth election in two years, they were very aware that a trip by Netanyahu would look to many Israelis like little more than a campaign photo-opportunity. So why taint an historic visit?
They didn’t rush to have Mr Bennett over after was he was sworn in, either. They much preferred him to land in Abu Dhabi once he was bedded in and had ensured his new government’s stability by passing a state budget. In a region where leaders often meet with great fanfare despite being at each other’s necks, the Emiratis do things differently. They prefer their business to be high-profile and the politics to remain under the radar.
That’s why when Mr Bennett and the de facto Emirati leader, Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayid, did finally meet on Monday for four hours at his personal residence, their offices afterwards issued only the blandest, if friendliest, of joint statements, which included a few details on trade and technology but didn’t mention the main issue that was on the table, Iran.
The shared concern over Iran’s regional ambitions is what brought Israel and the Arab regimes on the Persian Gulf together to begin with, more than any other topic. But talking about it in public just isn’t the
Emirati way.
It wasn’t the Israeli way either, until
Mr Netanyahu was re-elected in 2009. His predecessors Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert had a policy of rarely referring to Iran publicly. Their reasoning was that “Iran is a problem for the entire world, not just Israel,” as Mr Sharon would say in private.
For Mr Netanyahu, however, it was the main and often the only talking point. Perhaps Mr Bennett should learn from his hosts that the Sharon way is more efficient.
DUMPED BY TRUMP
Trump’s Peace, the new book published this week in Hebrew by Israeli journalist Barak Ravid, has made a stir both in Jerusalem and Washington, largely due to quotes from the former US President. Donald Trump was so incensed at Benjamin Netanyahu’s congratulations to Joe Biden on winning last year’s presidential election that he hasn’t spoken to him since.
“F*** him,” said Mr Trump in his interview with the author.
But “Trump’s Peace” is about a lot more than its namesake’s profanities. The book is a detailed account of four years of diplomacy in the Middle East. Among many insights I gained from reading it was one relating to the current role of Britain, once a key player in the region. More accurately, the nonexistent role.
Of the two British prime ministers in this period, Theresa May doesn’t even warrant a mention and Boris Johnson was involved just once, when at the United Nations General Assembly in 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron (who
was
deeply involved in regional diplomacy) asked him, along with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, to try and help convince Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to meet with Mr Trump.
It was a waste of time, as Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had already decreed such a meeting would not take place.
Only at one point did the Trump administration invoke the “special relationship” and involve their British allies. That was just before the Trump peace deal was revealed in January 2020, when Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab was the first non-American to be shown the plan. But even then, the administration wasn’t interested in British input or assistance. It simply expected Britain to automatically support it in public.
That’s not to say that no Britons were involved in Middle East diplomacy in the Trump years. According to the book, Tony Blair was extremely active as a discreet and influential advisor to several leaders in the region, including Crown Prince Bin Zayid (a key figure, along with Trump and Netanyahu, in achieving the “Abraham Accords”) and Egyptian President Abdelfattah a-Sisi.
Mr Blair also set up one of the few back-channels for talks between the Trump administration and the Palestinian Authority. That was after Mr Trump announced in December 2017 that he was moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem and the Palestinians cut all formal ties with the Americans. But Mr Blair was acting throughout in his capacity as a private citizen and not on behalf of the British government.
If post-Brexit Britain has become once again a force to be reckoned with on the global stage, we are yet to hear about it in the Middle East.
PANDEMIC FALLOUT
Just as Mr Bennett’s plane was touching down in Abu Dhabi on Sunday night, trouble was brewing back at home. Education Minister Yifat ShasahBiton had just fired Yigal Slovik, the director-general of the ministry (she had preempted his resignation, apparently).
Mr Slovik, a former tank general, had previously held a senior post on the National Security Council and had been appointed only five months earlier. Almost immediately, he was at loggerheads with his minister over her opposition to carrying out Covid-19 vaccinations within schools.
In a statement to the media, the minister insisted that the sacking had nothing to do with vaccinations but was due to differences of policy in other fields. However, sources close to Mr Slovik insisted that differences on jabs was exactly the reason, adding that the final straw had come last week when Dr Shasha-Biton had said in public that the mobile vaccination clinics would operate only outside schools, while he had been tasked with carrying out government policy that they would jab within the schools.
The minister has a doctorate in education and has been insisting for months that she has nothing against vaccines, but she believes that vaccinating children at school causes them undue pressure. Since Mr Slovik’s sacking, however, reports have come out of her meetings with a number of anti-vaccine advocates (and worse) that staff at the ministry had been ordered by her to withhold information about Covid-19 breakouts at schools instead of passing them on as required to the daily meeting on the pandemic, chaired by Prime Minister Bennett.
In a normal government, the alleged conduct of Dr Shasha-Biton, if proven, would be grounds for immediate sacking by the prime minister. But under the terms of the coalition agreement, Mr Bennett can sack only ministers from his own party, Yamina.
In theory at least, her party leader, Gideon Sa’ar, could sack her, but he’s not going to do it, either. The coalition is too small, with a majority of only two Knesset members, to allow itself to have a constantly disgruntled member on the back-benches not voting with the government.
Due to the coalition’s structural weakness, no-one can be moved without mutual agreement and the education minister is going nowhere. But as the fifth wave of Covid-19 infections slowly begins to spread and children (a much lower proportion of whom are vaccinated) become the main carriers of the virus, jabs in schools could be critical. Having a minister who is unwilling to cooperate on that may soon be much more than just a political headache.