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Neither the Arab League nor the Organization of Islamic Cooperation have yet responded to the Palestinian request for an urgent international response to the normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, announced on Thursday. While the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Saeb Erekat, expressed on Sunday his fear that the diplomatic agreement would give the final touch to the solution of the two states, the Israeli and Emirati foreign ministers launched a line direct phone.
Despondency, loneliness and failure hang over Palestinian diplomacy, which has been surprised by the joint declaration of complete normalization of ties between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed, sponsored by President Donald Trump, who hopes to make it official. in the White House. "I sincerely believe that this step is going to kill the two-state solution," Erekat acknowledged in a videoconference with the international press based in Jerusalem. "Netanyahu no longer has an interest (in accepting a Palestinian state) if he believes that the Arab countries are going to queue up to make peace with him," added the veteran Palestinian negotiator.
Erekat and Netanyahu made themselves known to the world at the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference, which two years later laid the foundations for the Oslo Accords and Palestinian self-government after the military occupation in force since 1967. In an official statement, Shortly afterwards the Israeli prime minister put another nail in the coffin of the solution of the two states and the principle of peace by territories: “This agreement is different from the previous ones (with Egypt and Jordan): it is about 'peace for peace' and 'peace through force, "he emphasized," and Israel no longer has to withdraw from any territory. "
Netanyahu took refuge in the doctrine that "in the Middle East the strong is the one who survives and who makes peace" to emphasize that there will be no Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank or East Jerusalem in order for a Palestinian state to emerge. Against the counterclaims of the White House, he also remained firm in the plan not to renounce the annexation to the Jewish State of the settlements of Jewish settlers and the strategic Jordan Valley in West Bank territory. Thus he summarized his message, of evident electoral significance: "The concept of peace through weakness and withdrawal has disappeared."
Erekat had already warned that this unilateral policy, without a fair negotiation between the parties, will only serve to pave the way for extremism, both between Israelis and Palestinians and the rest of the region. The diplomatic agreement sealed by Israel and the Emirates "is a poisoned dagger" stuck in the hearts of the Palestinians, the PLO secretary general lamented pessimistically.
In a lively conversation, the heads of Israeli diplomacy, Gabi Ashkenazi, and the United Arab Emirates, Abdullah Bin Zayed al Nahyan, meanwhile established "a direct channel of communication" in view of the normalization of relations between the two countries. After the hasty launch of the telephone connection, the two foreign officials agreed to meet soon.
The tightening of ties appears to have accelerated. The Emirati company Apex National Investment and the Israeli company Tera Group announced early in the morning a medical research agreement on the coronavirus pandemic, which follows the line of the one signed in July between the Israeli public aerospace company IAI and the technology company Abu Dhabi Group 42.
The diplomatic rapprochement with Israel will soon be supported by other Arab countries, Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen predicted on state radio. "Bahrain and Oman, in the Gulf, and Sudan, in Africa may be the next to establish relations," Cohen said. A few hours earlier, the former chief of the Du. Bai police, Dahi Jalfan, was interviewed on channel 12 of Israeli television, where he called Erekat an "old-fashioned mentality" for his rejection of normalization with the Emirates.
Changes in geopolitical perception are taking place in a chain. From Mauritania, a state that had an Israeli Embassy after the Oslo Accords and until the end of the first war in Gaza (2009), diplomatic spokesmen praised "the wisdom and good judgment" of the Emirati leaders in making their ties with Israel official. Even a political ally of Hezbollah such as the president of Lebanon, the Christian Michel Aoun, has limited himself to commenting on a French station that the Emirates is an "independent" country to fix its relations.
Military and strategic advantages
Despite the fact that the Palestinian leader Saeb Erekat questions the real interest of the Emirati princes in the rapprochement with Israel, the Gulf country has relied for two decades on the Israeli defense industry for the modernization of its weapons, such as the F- fighters. 16. In its ambition to shore up its regional influence, the Emirates aspires to also equip itself with missile systems, precision ammunition or unmanned aircraft, according to the Yediot Ahronot newspaper . Israel is trying to establish itself off the coast of Iran (which has already been deployed militarily in Syria and Lebanon), as has happened secretly on Azerbaijani soil and with greater secrecy in Iraqi Kurdistan.