Who will be next to betray Palestine?

Ali Abunimah Power Suits 14 August 2020

People hold images of regional leaders with foot marks on them

Palestinians take part in a protest against the United Arab Emirates’ deal to normalize relations with Israel, occupied West Bank city of Nablus, 14 August.

Shadi Jarar’ah APA images

The United Arab Emirates’ agreement to normalize ties with Israel is its “gravest betrayal of the struggle for Palestinian liberation and self-determination,” Palestine’s BDS National Committee (BNC) said on Friday.

The BNC, which leads the global boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign, is urging Emirati citizens to boycott any Israeli presence in their country and to refrain from traveling to Israel and the occupied West Bank, especially Jerusalem.

It is also calling for boycotts and divestment of any Emirati companies complicit with normalization and urging people across the Arab world to boycott “all activities, festivals and projects sponsored by the UAE regime.”

The BNC rejected as a “lie” claims that the Emirati move induced Israel to suspend its plans to annex large parts of the occupied West Bank.

After the agreement was announced on Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reaffirmed his commitment to annexation but said he had only delayed it temporarily to reach an agreement with the Trump administration on how to implement it.

“With its agreement with the UAE dictatorship, Israel has added yet another police state to its league of international friends and allies,” the BNC said.

The condemnation echoes the strength of feeling across Palestinian society and the Arab world – with much disgust being expressed on social media.

UAE allied with extremists

The UAE-Israel agreement has been dubbed by its American authors as the Abraham Accords, an effort to dress up a sordid political deal that undermines Palestinian rights as a lofty achievement for interfaith understanding.

By normalizing ties with Israel, however, the Emirates and any other states that follow suit are entering an alliance with extremist religious forces backed by the Israeli government and political elites whose ultimate goal is the destruction of Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque and its replacement with a Jewish temple.

At the al-Aqsa mosque on Friday, worshippers waved Palestinian flags and walked on and burned portraits of the UAE’s de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Israel reportedly arrested worshippers and seized protesters’ banners.

Who is next in line?

Yet it is doubtful such reactions will deter other Gulf states from following suit.

Reports that Oman and Bahrain are next in line to normalize ties with Israel gained credence after both countries welcomed the UAE’s step.

Saudi Arabia – the biggest prize for Israel – had as of Friday remained silent, despite its moves to cozy up to Tel Aviv in recent years.

Yet it is certain that smaller Saudi regional allies would not take such steps without its approval.

Qatar and Kuwait have also remained officially silent so far.

However, Kuwait – which has stood apart from the regional trend towards normalization – will almost certainly not follow suit.

Political parties in the country on Friday issued a joint declaration calling normalization with Israel “treason” and “a crime against the Palestinian people.”

Qatar

Qatar is in an odd position.

It has been blockaded and isolated by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and their allies for three years, so it would have no immediate incentive to follow their lead.

Yet Qatar has its own history of warm ties with Israel.

Aside from Jordan and Egypt which had peace treaties with Israel, Doha was the only Arab capital to host an Israeli trade office, following the signing of the 1993 Oslo accords, but closed it down in 2000.

Currently, Qatar deals directly with Israel on coordinating aid to Gaza, including cash payments that Israel sees as crucial to pacify the population there living under the crushing Israeli siege.

After the 2017 Saudi-led blockade of Qatar, Doha moved to shore up support in Washington with a full-scale charm offensive towards the Israel lobby.

This included bowing to Israel lobby pressure to censor Al Jazeera’s explosive documentary on that lobby’s secret workings.

The documentary was leaked and published by The Electronic Intifada in 2018.

Yet Qatar and its regional rivals – all clients of the United States – must compete for American support by toeing Washington’s line.

That may eventually put pressure on Doha to be even more forthcoming towards Israel.

Turkey accused the UAE of “betraying the Palestinian cause” and Iran called the Emirati move a “dagger in the back” of all Muslims.

Egypt, a close ally of the UAE which signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, welcomed the deal.

Jordan, which signed its peace treaty with Israel in 1994, issued a more equivocal statement, neither openly praising nor condemning the UAE’s move.

Its foreign minister Ayman Safadi said the UAE-Israel agreement needed to be followed by “serious and effective” negotiations in line with the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative.

However, Safadi failed to note that by normalizing ties with Israel before Palestinians achieve any of their rights, the United Arab Emirates had violated a core principle of that initiative.

The BNC is not counting on diplomatic moves and negotiations. It is vowing that Palestinians, “supported by the absolute majority in the Arab world and by people of conscience globally,” will continue their struggle for justice.

“We call on people across the globe to escalate boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigns against Israel’s ongoing annexation and apartheid,” the BNC said.

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Comments

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Mark Leventhal replied on

40 Years ago I predicted the Palestinians would never "negotiate" until they realized they could never win; until all hope was gone. In the end, they will have passed up much better "deals" only to settle for the crumbs they will get. How short-sided; how their leadership miss-judged the long play only to enrich their own personal fortunes and disregard the welfare of their people. It's very sad to me.

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Thomas A replied on

Spot on, Mark Leventhal! It really is a sad story. And of course - after every NO you get a worse offer the next time. Abbas complained that nobody had asked/told them. With that "track record" - why should they? But the leadership got their Mercedes and mansions so everything is OK?

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john m costello replied on

Of course you're right Mark and how prescient of you. Whenever will the vanquished finally learn that they have nothing they can expect from the law?
Put another way, when will they and those rising from their plush seats in the western wings finally face the fact that the bully's are in charge and so their notions of right and wrong can't be furthered or enforced. The demagogues are loosed and happy people might have to re-think their positions on the sidelines, if they ever want to be happy again. Or more truthfully and effectively, abandon their reliance on views and personal commitments that have sustained the unsustainable

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BW replied on

Is this THE Mark Leventhal? The prophet Mark Leventhal? I have followed your writings for many years, and how right you're always selectively proved to be in hindsight.

Deals with Stroessner in Paraguay, supporting Pinochet and apartheid South Africa, Guatamalan death squads, Russian mafia, training US police, I well remember your insights on the Sabra and Shatila massacres and all the assassinations, collective punishments, bombings, drone strikes meted out on Palestinians over decades and of course your long personal crusade to bring Jeffrey Epstein to justice, anything morally questionable or downright genocidal linked to Israel you unfailingly called it out, and never engaged in the so called hasbara, leaping into the breach with ready made defences of Israel, followed by a little squad of applauding admirers, never ever sounding smug and self-congratulatory, but very sad as befits someone of your breathtaking oracular powers

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Oh! Crumbs? (What crumbs?) replied on

@ Mark Leventhal : A serious question or three for you here. I know its now very late for this but if you do read these, please think and please answer.

1) What crumbs do you think the Palestinians might actually get if & when they give up all hope? If the Palestinians were to unconditionally surrender to Israel now and admit defat and plead for mercy and some "crumbs" what crumbs do you think Netanyahu would actually give them?

2) Do you really think the Palestinians will lose all hope & how long and what do you think it will take to produce that state of utter despair and hopelessness? Is that fair and reasonable to expect of them? What if the Americans or Israelis or anyone else was in the Palestinians position, would you expect them, would you advise *_your_* people, your nation to just lose all hope completely and give up on doing anything other than throwing themselves on their occupiers mercy?

3) If the Palestinians do lose all hope and despair, do you think they will then just roll over and die? Is it not possible, and perhaps more likely even, that in their despair they might not act as you seem to hope and "negotiate" / surrender but rather take other far worse and more destructive actions and could that explain some of their individual actions so far?

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john m costello replied on

Vying for a bit more than crumbs was their downfall. Like an uppity Negro, they thought the law meant them too. And it would ACCORDING TO THE LAW but it appears the law is fluid, it can flow this way and that way for those in a position to levy it. I'm completely insecure about "faith in the law". Power rules today and morality is a beggar leaning on a cracked ethic.

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Nestor Makhno replied on

I use to fly regurarly to Bangladesh. Untill it became clear to me that the UAE was strongly involved in the war against Jemen. From that moment on I stopped flying with Emirates. Everybody should do that . Avoid using UAE services and companies.

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john m costello replied on

The Saudis and the Emiratis are Muslim but they slaughter other Muslims and oppress their own, while they enable Western regional hegemony which sanctions Iranian Muslims into poverty, for regime change; another shah, one would presume. These are all Muslims and you are pinning your hopes on a religion which can and too often does serve political power, whomever wields it. Islam and good politics are not mutually exclusive but I would place the latter first, because it is inherently morally transparent, because it doesn't claim ownership of morality. Unlike religion, which has historically betrayed morality to political power, precisely because its self-proclaimed dominion over it provides purely political agendas (often antithetical to theology) with ready made disciples.

Ali Abunimah

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine, now out from Haymarket Books.

Also wrote One Country: A Bold-Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. Opinions are mine alone.