This week, the highly influential Emirati ambassador in Washington published an op-ed in a popular Israeli daily threatening to halt future normalization steps if Israel annexes the West Bank.
It is exactly the policies of the Gulf regimes that made this annexation more likely.
It is exactly the policies of the Gulf regimes that made this annexation more likely.
Link to the English text of the article: ynetnews.com/article/H1Gu1c…
Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which increased Iranian influence & even more so since the Arab uprisings, the Gulf regimes focused on countering the Iranian threat & the Muslim Brotherhood
Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which increased Iranian influence & even more so since the Arab uprisings, the Gulf regimes focused on countering the Iranian threat & the Muslim Brotherhood
and Islamist governments, which they perceive as a source of threat to their personalistic rule, devoid of any ideology except a deep fear of the Arab masses. Under these conditions, it's only natural for these regimes to cooperate with Israel, which shares all of these concerns.
Before normalization, the Right could promise to Israelis security and combating terrorism, while the Left could promise peace. Following the 2nd intifada, Israeli Jews came to prioritize security above all else, hence the Right keeps winning.
Yet Israelis also want peace & don't want to experience wars every few years. The Right could not provide such peace and quiet, until normalization. The normalization policy significantly bolstered the Israeli Right. Now, the Right can claim to offer both security & peace.
The Left now has no competitive advantage over the Right, only downsides (it's seen as soft on security). Hence it's collapse. All the warning of the Left that the continuation of the occupation will lead to int'l isolation have been proven false by Trump, Otaiba & company.
Normalization encourages the continuation of the occupation. Israel can now get what it desires - recognition and acceptance by neigboring countries - without paying anything in return, meaning ending the occupation or even just engaging in serious negotiations.
The relative silence of the normalizing regime to Trump's decisions to recognize the illegal annexation of the Golan, move the embassy to Jerusalem & cooperation with the "Deal of the Century" also likely encouraged Netanyahu to seriously consider the West Bank annexation.
This behavior by Arab regimes bolsters Netanyahu's belief in Jabotinsky's Iron Wall theory: if Israel maintains dominance, eventually Arabs will come around & accept Israel's existence. Then from a position of superiority, something can be negotiated en.jabotinsky.org/media/9747/the…
At the end of the day, any "peace" that ignores the demands of the Palestinian people is doomed to fail. It will be another cold peace between regimes, not people. The Palestinians are beaten & exhausted now, but I doubt they'll tolerate abusive military rule forever.
