Three cheers for @MohamedBinZayed and his ambo in Washington Yousef al-Otaiba for a courageous and creative move to normalize relations with Israel, take its annexation of Palestinian land off the table and strike a blow to Israel’s right wing annexationist bloc.
@netanyahu may claim he’s still committed to annexation but in practice he has no way to do it now without sacrificing Israel’s relations with the UAE. Trump too cannot legitimize annexation after brokering this deal.
Palestinians feel betrayed but should have read the writing that’s been on the wall for a long time. Arab states will not pressure them to make a deal but they will not hold up their bilateral relations with Israel for Palestinians’ sake. Expect Oman and Bahrain to follow.
Anti-normalization like BDS will not achieve Palestinian rights. Dealing directly with Israel, as Abu Mazen recently called for, is the only way to go and that includes building not blocking Israeli-Palestinian relations at the grass roots level.
A diplomatic footnote: this is not a peace agreement. The UAE is not in a state of war with Israel and has no territorial dispute with it. Kushner deserves credit but the idea that Trump should be given the Nobel Peace prize for promoting UAE-Israel normalization is a bad joke.
It was Trump’s promotion of annexation, an anti-peace move, that helped spur this development. So perhaps he deserves the Nobel anti-peace prize!
One of the indirect beneficiaries is Jordan which no longer has to chose between its relations with the Palestinians and its relations with the US and Israel. Helping King Abdullah out of the bind the Trump Plan had put him in was a primary motivation for MBZ.
