Daily Times

On September 15, Israel and the Gulf states—Bahrain and the UAE officially agreed to begin normalizing relations in a deal brokered by the US President Donald Trump. “We have conducted quiet diplomacy and sent very public signals to help shift the dynamics and promote the possible,” Yousef Otaiba, The Emirati Envoy to the US wrote. Yet an Israeli annexation, he added, “will certainly and immediately upend Israeli aspirations for improved security, economic and cultural ties with the Arab world and with UAE.” "Israel for the foreseeable future will be focused on building this relationship and pursuing all the advantages that can come from having this new relationship with this country, and we also break the ice for doing more normalizations and peace agreements with other regional players as well," one White House official told Reuters. Yet, the question does arise whether the UAE could have done more for its "Palestinian brothers" as it negotiated the deal with Israel and the US. It seems apparent that it just didn't matter that much to them.

Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa told visiting US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the Gulf state remained committed to the creation of a Palestinian state, according to state media, in an implicit rejection of Washington's push for Arab countries to swiftly normalise ties with Israel.   Yet hubristically-, two right-wing Scandinavian politicians nominated Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. Leading U.S. right-wing media pundit Laura Ingraham declared it “obvious” that Trump be given the prize, though he is unlikely to receive it. It’s not a peace deal, it’s a normalisation of ties,” said FRANCE 24’s correspondent in Jerusalem, Irris Makler. The move is truly significant, she added, "but it doesn’t carry the same weight as the peace deals with Egypt and Jordan, because they were enemies with whom Israel had been at war.” The deal-a dramatic break with the old pan-Arab consensus—seeking the discourse of normalization of relations on a final peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians—reflects a sea change in the Gulf States’ stance vis-a-vis the Palestinian issue.

Hypocritically, Netanyahu-coalition government has approved 2,166 new homes in settlements across the occupied West Bank, this development came less than a month after the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed agreements to normalise relations with Israel

The UAE made clear that one of the benefits it sees from the normalization agreement with Israel is that it should be easier to acquire F-35s from the United States, a view also shared by Trump's senior adviser Jared Kushner. That would give the Emiratis the latest fighter jet in the US inventory and a significant edge over any other military in the region, with the exception of Israel. It is also critically important that we fully understand the agreements’ details regarding the announced freeze of efforts by Israel to annex portions of the West Bank,” Pelosi added in a Tuesday statement, highlighting a House-passed resolution that endorsed a two-state solution and discouraged unilateral annexation.

Euphorically, while Trump administration officials have suggested that Saudi Arabia would follow in the footsteps of its Gulf neighbours in normalising relations with Israel, Riyadh has said it will stand by the Arab peace initiative moved in 2002 via the Arab League platform that conditions relations with Israel on establishing a Palestinian state. But allowing the Emirates flights to use the Saudi airspace as transit passage to Israel has raised suspicion. From the US point of view, with President Trump’s full support for the current deal, White House Senior Advisor Jared Kushner and his team crafted a grand plan for the so-called Middle East peace venture being realized and under review by world’s powerful quarters. The fact remains that the so called Western claim that the deal is aimed at weaving a soft power dynamic between the Gulf States and Israel is not true. Factually, the deal has faded the Palestinian cause of freedom.

In an interesting move, Jared Kushner, the brainchild of the Abraham Accords, had canceled his interview to the MSNBC’s anchor Andrea Mitchel as she boldly and rightly said that the Abraham Accords is not Middle East peace. "With pomp and circumstance, the president is heralding the first Arab nations to recognize Israel since 1994," Mitchell reported. "Both countries have quietly dealt with Israel for years, sharing intelligence against Iran, a common enemy." The truth is that in many ways, “The Abraham Accords” amount to an arms deal. The U.A.E. and other states that now engage with Israel will find themselves armed with a better class of American weaponry. The U.S. has pledged for a very long time to maintain Israel’s qualitative military edge, but the U.A.E., in particular, might have just arranged for itself a similar promise.

By no means, the current deal serves to herald an era of peace in the Mideast in that the Palestinians as both ‘de facto and de jure party [to the Palestinian –Israeli conflict have no say in this deal. Obviously, Arab leaders are signalling to the Palestinians that they have an axe to grind where there is the question of their interests, and also that they would very much like to be partners with Israel in high-tech development and in the fight against Iran. IF PM Netanyahu doesn’t permanently discard the annexation plan it then clearly suggests that the Tony Blair’s doctrine to support the American project of the Greater Middle East (GMEI) Imitative once conceived during the Iraq war 2003 is being replicated via smart political engineering that forms the nexus between the US-Israel-Gulf states with the engagement of the Gulf states by the Trump administration thereby securing the long-term geopolitically imagined political/national interests of the United States Israel’s Knesset has passed the  regulari sation bill, which “legalises” settlements built on privately-owned Palestinian land via de facto expropriation. Israelis now working on the lines to market their crowd control weapons and systems of homeland security to the US, based on testing in the POT. Yet all this financial investment in the occupation – and all the twisting of domestic laws to protect the illegal settlement project– is rotting Israel from the inside, turning it into an apartheid state that rules over millions of Palestinians without rights.

Hypocritically, Netanyahu-coalition government has approved 2,166 new homes in settlements across the occupied West Bank, this development came less than a month after the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed agreements to normalise relations with Israel, which in return pledged to freeze its plans to annex swathes of the occupied West Bank. Realistically, for a durable and sustainable peace future in the Mideast region, we the Muslims need to oppose and condemn the current Jewish- American synergy of occupation that prevents a just resolution and cements a system of exploitation, expropriation and annexation power as the genuine prognosis of the deal suggests that the said deal is intrinsically an affirmation to Israeli security by the Arabs. Make no mistake for many Muslim states including Pakistan, Turkey and Malaysia the question of recogmising Israel remains impossible as long as the final settlement of the Palestinian independence.