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Around-the-halls: Experts analyze the normalization of Israel-UAE ties

"Netanyahu takes office in deal that could see West Bank annexation"

Natan Sachs, Bruce Riedel, Jeffrey Feltman, Tamara Cofman Wittes, Suzanne Maloney, Shadi Hamid, and Salam Fayyad

Thursday, August 13, 2020

Order from Chaos

On August 13, Israel and United Arab Emirates (UAE) struck a major diplomatic agreement, with a joint Israel-UAE-U.S.
statement .. https://translations.state.gov/2020/08/13/joint-statement-of-the-united-states-the-state-of-israel-and-the-united-arab-emirates/ .. announcing that in exchange for “full normalization of relations” between the two countries, Israel would forgo, for now, “declaring sovereignty” over disputed territory in the West Bank. Brookings experts on the Middle East analyze the news and its implications.

Natan Sachs (@natansachs), Director and Fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy: Normalization between Israel and the UAE is an excellent thing, in and of itself. It’s high time these countries have open, normal relations. But the context is of course key: the Israeli plan to annex parts of the West Bank, along the lines to be delineated by the U.S. and Israel after the release of Trump administration plan. The UAE-Israeli-U.S. deal allows everyone to climb down: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can avoid the terrible mistake of annexation while claiming he got something big for it (he did!). The UAE can claim it prevented annexation from happening — from UAE Ambassador Yousef Otaiba’s Hebrew-language op-ed warning of the move, to the big carrot of diplomatic normalization. Trump gets to avoid the annexation he himself sanctioned, and all the complications it could have produced, while showing a big win for two of his favorite allies.

There is, of course, something odd about rewarding a non-blunder. Annexation could have been (and perhaps already was) avoided easily with a decision in Washington or Jerusalem alone, but the countries can now move forward with what they’ve long wanted: cooperation among two often-like minded countries, with common regional concerns.

The losers, as often, are the Palestinians. The impatience in the Gulf with the Palestinians now comes to full daylight. The Gulf won’t wait for them any longer, asking of Israel only to avoid declarations of a major change to the status quo.

A question is whether anyone else, and especially the Saudis, might follow. For now, though, the camp of Arab countries with peace or normalization with Israel grows to four: following Egypt (1977), Jordan (1994), and Lebanon, whose nominal leaders signed a meaningless peace treaty with Israel during the Israeli invasion in 1983. This latest agreement to normalize is not nearly as consequential as the first two. Hopefully it will have more meaning than the latter one.

[... there are some sorta similar others stating the obvious. To these last two which are more on the mark ...]

Shadi Hamid (@shadihamid), Senior Fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy: In theory, who can argue against peace? In practice and principle, though, Israel is being rewarded for not doing something it should have never considered doing in the first place — annexing parts of the West Bank. This isn’t diplomacy, and it isn’t peace. It’s cynical, and it shows, once again, that Arab authoritarian regimes can’t be bothered to pretend they care about Palestinian rights. For the UAE, it’s a means to an end, formalizing increasingly warm feelings toward Israel, due to their shared enemy of Iran and their shared (and unusual) preference for President Trump over President Obama.

The word “authoritarian” is worth highlighting here. It’s hard to imagine an Arab country, if it were democratic, striking a peace deal with Israel today. Whether that’s a strike against — or for — democracy is another question. Of course, it’s not exactly an accident that Israel, one of the region’s few democracies, prefers that its Arab neighbors not be democratic, and the deal with the UAE is a reminder why.

Salam Fayyad, Distinguished Fellow in the Foreign Policy program: Yet another sign of bad times. Little did Arab leaders know, when they adopted the Arab Peace Initiative some 18 years ago, that normalization for withdrawal from the occupied Arab territories would turn into normalization for a mere suspension — read: deferment to a more opportune time — of further formal annexation of West Bank territory. Israel got itself a huge prize for merely temporarily refraining from committing another egregious violation of international law.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/08/13/around-the-halls-experts-analyze-the-normalization-of-israel-uae-ties/