The formal opening of the UAE embassy in Israel, which they did on Wednesday, is a tacit acceptance of the fact, if one was still needed, that the dispossessed Palestinians are no longer the conscience of the Arab world. And also that the Star of David fluttering over the Mosque of Omar no longer evokes visceral passions among Bedouin statesmen whose oil bonanza catapulted them to the top of the hierarchy of Muslim nations. It also drives the final nail in the coffin of the so called two-state solution and pretty much leaves the Palestinians on their own if they still wish to pursue the dream of return. It was, after all, the Gulf states’ petrodollars, along with generous dole outs from the European Union (EU), that made Chairman Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) the world’s best funded revolutionary movement. To say that things have changed a little over the years would most probably be the biggest understatement of this entire freedom struggle. The Arabs didn’t like it at all when Hamas won the election and took over the Gaza Strip in 2006, because of its ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, and they liked it even less when Hamas and Fatah (PLO’s political offspring) descended into internecine warfare in 2007 and not only insulted and embarrassed sixty years of blood and tears but also shattered the myth of Palestinian unity forever. The Gulf sheikhs still fund Fatah, but not in the way their money made Arafat and his comrades grow rich in exile in Lebanon in the 1970s and 80s. Now, though, with Fatah chief and Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas publically fuming about the Arab-Israeli handshake, the flow of that money in future might not be as certain as it was in the past. That is not to say that everybody has abandoned the Palestinians. Saudi Arabia, despite all the predictions in the international press, hasn’t yet gone the way of the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan. And Pakistan, the self-professed Fort of Islam and the only Muslim nuclear power, has also refused to entertain such thoughts till the Palestinians get their stolen lands back. But how such assurances, without hard cash, are supposed to help a refugee population spread over at least a dozen countries isn’t immediately clear. What is crystal clear, however, is the fact that the Palestinians were never as distant from their dream of one day reclaiming their homes as they are now. How hollow Arafat’s calls, “O Haifa, O Jerusalem, we are returning, we are returning,” sounds now. *