Peace for interests in the Middle East

Protest against the UAE-Bahrain agreement with Israel in Gaza on Tuesday.MOHAMMED SALEM / Reuters

Israel is beginning to fill the void left by the progressive withdrawal of the United States in the Middle East.

The common threat that Iran represents in the region - entrenched in Syria and Yemen - has fostered a rapprochement between the military and technological power of the Jewish State and the economic power of the Gulf monarchies.

The historic ceremony on Tuesday at the White House, in which the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will seal the normalization of diplomatic relations with the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain more closely resembles a mutual interest contract than a geostrategic entity.

In fact, while Abu Dhabi embraces the treaty formula after announcing the exchange of embassies with Israel a month ago, the Manama regime limits itself to signing a generic declaration that it will establish relations in the future, after having joined the last minute to the pomp of the "Abraham Accords", as they have been baptized by the White House.

Are we witnessing the birth of a new Middle East?

The prediction of Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, seems more in line with the campaign strategy for the re-election of the Republican president than with a tectonic shift in the region.

Kushner, architect in the shadow of the diplomatic pact, has at least managed to formalize with great apparatus and at the appropriate procedural moment the normalization of relations with the Emirates and Bahrain

It is, in any case, a process of regional ties that has been narrowing for more than two decades, when Israel opened commercial representations in the Gulf after the Oslo Accords (1993) with the Palestinians.

As the former Director of National Security Jacob Nagel pointed out this Tuesday on Israeli radio, “the importance of the agreements should not be overestimated or neglected;

it is a process that creates an axis against Iran (...) and it is understood that (Emirates and Bahrain) will receive military support from Israel and the United States in return ”.

Netanyahu has been careful to divulge the details of the agreement before signing, and has limited himself to praising its historical relevance.

As Israelis prepare to be confined from this weekend and for three weeks the great holidays of the Jewish New Year, the impact of the diplomatic achievement of the prime minister has been diluted in the Hebrew state amid daily bad news of the health and economic crisis .

A spokesman for the Prime Minister's Office has assured that his speech at the White House "will contain a message of peace for the region" and that the agreement "will refer to the Palestinian question."

For now, there is no express mention of rearmament with stealth F-35 aircraft (theoretically undetectable by radar) with which the US will thank Abu Dhabi for its willingness to agree.

Until now, Israel had a military technological superiority guaranteed by Washington for six decades.

Netanyahu has hinted that he will claim compensation from Trump to maintain strategic advantage over the skies of the Middle East.

The Emiratis have already anticipated, however, that the normalization of relations will lead to the paralysis of the Israeli project for the partial annexation of the West Bank, which was based precisely on the so-called “Deal of the Century”, the Middle East peace plan of the White House presented in January and which has been flatly rejected by the Palestinians.

The Emirates Secretary of State for International Cooperation, Reem al Hashimy, has recorded this on CNN: “The suspension of annexation is an important component of the agreement (...) in defense of the Palestinians' right to a state and a dignified life ”.

After the fiasco of the negotiations with North Korea, Trump seeks to present in the campaign a profile of an international statesman who solves and concludes conflicts instead of provoking and launching them.

Less than two months before the presidential elections, the Republican magnate tries to equate his image with that of predecessors such as Jimmy Carter, who sponsored Egypt's treaty with Israel in 1979, and Bill Clinton, who in 1994 blessed peace in the White House with Jordan.

Trump thus adds two other Arab countries to the list of Arab countries that are related to the Jewish state, in a nod to voters of the pro-Israel evangelical Christian right.

The message of "peace for peace" that Netanyahu brings to Washington in the face of the supposedly abandoned international consensus of "peace for territories" hides an evident pragmatic turn towards "peace for interests".

The decision of the Emirates, a close ally of Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain, the puppet kingdom of Riyadh, is seen as a “betrayal” by the Palestinians, who have not been able to force a condemnation by the Arab League to some Gulf monarchies that precisely finance many of the states of the regional forum.

Israel's rapprochement with the Sunni countries, embodied by the federation of principalities and the small island kingdom, has had the unexpected effect of realigning the main Palestinian factions.

With all the bridges broken since 2007, Fatah, the nationalist party of President Mahmoud Abbas, and Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules de facto in the Gaza Strip, have created together with the rest of the political groups a “united command of resistance. ”.

This platform, unprecedented since the First Intifada (1987-1991), has called on the Palestinians on Tuesday to protest with black flags against the radical diplomatic turn, which buries the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative (peace for territories, in essence) .

Organizers hope that the mobilization will intensify on Thursday, the 38th anniversary of the massacre of Sabra and Shatila of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, and on Friday, in a "day of mourning" during the Muslim holy day.

It remains to be seen.

Since the July 2017 religious demonstrations at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and especially since the Marches of Return (2018-2109) on the Gaza border, the Palestinians have not risen en masse against Israel.