"A historic day for peace, a new Middle East is born with an agreement that no one thought was possible and that will soon be signed by another five or six Arab countries".
Donald Trump seals the pax americana in the Middle East with new promises, formalized by the signing at the White House of the 'Abrahamic Agreements', that is the agreements for the normalization of all-round relations between Israel on the one hand and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on the one hand. other, in exchange for the suspension of the annexation of the West Bank.
"A new dawn of peace, let's overcome divisions and listen to the heartbeat of history", echoed the Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, who signed the agreements with the foreign ministers of the other two countries, respectively Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Khalid bin Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Khalifa.
"Historic peace accords", the American president defined them in the South Lawn of the White House, in front of a crowd of hundreds of guests with very few masks and no social distancing.
But the Emirates and Bahrain have never been at war with Israel, they are not peace treaties like those signed with Egypt in 1979 and with Jordan in 1994. In any case, these are historical agreements that change the Middle Eastern map and balance. , marking Israel's acceptance into the Arab world and a common alliance against Iran, Washington's number one enemy in the region.
For Trump it is unquestionably a diplomatic triumph, which allows him to be accredited as a peacemaker and to boast a Nobel nomination seven weeks before the elections, while hoping to collect another success from the negotiations on Afghanistan.
As the name of the agreements suggests, it is also a victory for his friend and ally Netanyahu, so far chased by the controversy of the corruption trial and the postponement of the lockdown for the pandemic.
The only price it pays is suspension, not renunciation, of the annexation of the West Bank.
More than a few thorns remain, starting with the Palestinians, who felt "stabbed in the back" by the agreements of the two Arab countries after denying Trump the role of mediator for his pro-Israel decisions.
"It's a dark day," Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said.
But the tycoon now promises to involve other Gulf countries, probably Oman and Saudi Arabia, convinced that eventually even the Palestinians "will reach a point where they want to join the peace agreement", otherwise "they will be left aside".
