Right. But just to be clear, this has not been reported by Mark Landler, an honest journalist who maintains unofficial agreements. South Africa`s Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation regretted that the agreement was reached without consulting the Palestinians, even though the agreement is linked to their future, noting that the agreement does not guarantee a permanent suspension of the annexation of parts of the West Bank. [124] Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said the deal should be pursued by Israel, which abandons any plans to annex parts of the West Bank, and that if the agreement could lead to its withdrawal from the Palestinian territories, it would bring the Middle East closer to peace. Otherwise, it would only exacerbate the Arab-Israeli conflict. [88] Later in the day, the heads of state and government of Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will sign an agreement to pursue normalized relations. Bahrain`s foreign minister has agreed in recent days to sign a similar agreement at the same event, but the agreement between Israel and the UAE appears to be much more robust and coherent. And so, as he has repeatedly done in public and private, Netanyahu enters into a fairly familiar diatribe about Iranian misconduct, Iranian misdeeds, and how Israel and the Gulf states must unite against this threat from Iran. Otaiba nods all this time.
He agrees with everything Netanyahu says. And so, on the surface, it feels like a rather harmless conversation. Well, it`s a very mixed bag for Palestinians. Because you`re right. They avoid a catastrophic outcome that loses up to 30% of the territory that would one day have been part of a Palestinian state. And he did it quickly. Lord. Trump surrounded himself in the Oval Office with a large delegation of advisers and officials who showered him with praise, and he joked that the deal should be called «the Donald J. Trump deal.» At a subsequent briefing, White House National Security Adviser Robert C.
O`Brien even announced that the president would win the Nobel Peace Prize. On the 13th. In August 2020, the UAE`s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Anwar Gargash, announced the UAE`s agreement to normalize relations with Israel, saying his country wanted to address threats to the two-state solution, particularly the annexation of Palestinian territories, and called on Palestinians and Israelis to return to the negotiating table. He said he did not believe there would be an embassy in Jerusalem until there was a final agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis. [30] According to US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, «Israel and the UAE will fully normalize diplomatic relations. They will exchange messages and ambassadors and start working together on a broad front and in various fields such as tourism, education, healthcare, trade and security. [31] So let`s talk about the motivations that led the players here, the people you saw at that dinner 18 months ago, to make this deal. Because, as you said, it didn`t necessarily seem to be something that was going to happen at the time. So what happened between that dinner and this week that brought both countries to this point? So what he is saying in very direct terms is that the Arab states have other priorities on their agenda that are greater than defending the interests of the Palestinians. And so, from the Palestinians` point of view, this is a betrayal. This is a loss of leverage.
After all, this was the great pressure point the Palestinians had with Israel. If Israel ever wanted to be recognized by its neighbors, it had to reach an agreement with the Palestinians. Now it is clear that he no longer needs to do so. And that makes their situation, if possible, more desperate than ever. Otaiba had hosted a dinner with a senior Trump administration official who oversaw the administration`s policy toward Iran, as well as a number of other high-ranking journalists and another guest who was the ambassador to the United States from Bahrain — another Persian Gulf kingdom. So we sat down together for a classic Yousef Otaiba evening. A major legal obstacle that stood in the way of concluding a peace treaty between the United Arab Emirates and Israel was Federal Decree-Law No. 15 of the United Arab Emirates of 1972 on the boycott of Israel by the Arab League (the «Boycott of Israel Law») – the law that had promulgated the ban on travel, business and trade relations with Israel in the United Arab Emirates. Violation of Israel`s boycott law (like other similar boycott laws throughout the Middle East region) entailed the risk of prosecution and imprisonment and/or the resulting fines. On August 28, 2020, H.H. Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emirates, after announcing the UAE`s approval of the conclusion of the Abraham Agreement between the United Arab Emirates, issued Federal Decree-Law No.
4 of 2020, abolishing Israel`s Boycott Law. In Israel, development came at a dangerous time for the Lord. Netanyahu, who heads a fragile and divided coalition government and is on trial for corruption. His annexation promise, which he had made several times in the last three elections, had left him in a box after Mr. Kushner spoke out against moving forward without working on Mr. Trump`s official peace plan. But shortly after Thursday`s deal, Netanyahu and his domestic rivals announced they had made progress in coalition talks. Joe Biden, Trump`s opponent in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, praised the deal because it «builds on the efforts of several administrations to promote a broader Arab-Israeli opening, including the efforts of the Obama-Biden administration to build on the Arab peace initiative.» [42] They condemned the Abrahamic Accords as a betrayal.
The new agreement breaks a long-standing Arab consensus that the price of normal relations with Israel is Palestinian independence. However, the impetus for Thursday`s deal dates back to about the same time that Yousef al-Otaiba, the UAE`s ambassador to the United States who has worked closely with the Trump administration, wrote an editorial in the israeli popular newspaper Yediot Ahronot directly calling on Israelis not to annex the occupied territories in Hebrew. On the other hand, what is the symbolism of this agreement is really very bad for the Palestinians. Because what it shows is that the UAE is ready to normalize its relations with Israel if there is no agreement that would give the Palestinians a state. This has always been the precondition for many of these Arab states to recognize Israel, that it should have made a deal with the Palestinians. It must have adopted the two-state solution. It did not adopt the two-state solution. In fact, the two-state solution seems more distant than ever. And yet, the United Arab Emirates has reached this agreement. The hope for many is that over time, the Abraham Accords will give impetus to other Gulf states (and other states that impose a boycott on Israel) to sign similar agreements with Israel, or at least to lift current restrictions, allowing travel between those states and Israel and creating other important opportunities for trade and business. We have already seen a movement in this regard, with 23. In October 2020, a peace agreement was signed between Sudan and Israel (as in the case of the Abraham Accords, an agreement negotiated by the US government).
Another recent positive development in which Saudi Arabia is involved is the opening of the country`s airspace to direct air travel between the UAE and Israel from September 2 this year, following a request from the UAE to Saudi Arabia. But now Israel is cementing new public relations with Arab states, while Palestinians are still languishing under occupation in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and in an open prison in Gaza. The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement stressing that as a member of the United Nations Security Council and the Middle East Quartet, it supports the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He noted that the agreement suspended the annexation of parts of the West Bank, which he described as an important element of the agreement, and said that annexation plans were a major obstacle to the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian dialogue. [120] Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a phone call with Netanyahu on August 24 that he hoped the deal would increase stability and security in the Middle East. [121] As he has done several times in recent days, Mr. Trump predicted that he would then reach a quick deal with Iran to contain his nuclear deal if re-elected, though there is no sign that such a reconciliation is really imminent. «If I win the elections,» he said, «I will have a deal with Iran within 30 days.» Amira Hass wrote that the deal was the product of the Palestinian Authority`s continued neglect in its relations with the Uae. According to Hass, diplomatic relations were severed by the PLO in 2012 to reject the UAE`s good relations with Mohammed Dahlan, the political enemy of PLO President Mahmoud Abbas. The ANP`s hostility towards the UAE continued until June 2020, when the PLO refused assistance sent by the UAE during the COVID-19 pandemic on the grounds that it had been sent without prior consent and through an Israeli airport. The hatred is manifested by a PLO that is more concerned with domestic politics than governance, contributing to economic decline and the strain on foreign relations.
[164] It sounds like you`re saying this somewhat counterintuitively because Netanyahu is pushing, at least publicly, for the annexation of the West Bank — which he may have been secretly grateful for the opportunity to stop. .