August 14, 2020 - 3:55pm
Slowly but inexorably, Sunni Arab rulers in the Middle East are building an alliance with Israel against Iran and its Hezbollah proxies. This process received another stamp of official confirmation yesterday as Israel signed what was dubbed an “historic deal” to normalise relations with the United Arab Emirates. Israeli deals with more Gulf States — and perhaps even Saudi Arabia — may soon follow.
This isn’t a radically altered power configuration so much as a formal acknowledgement of increasingly cordial relations between Israel and its Sunni Arab neighbours. In exchange for treating Israel as a normal country, Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged to shelve plans to annex large chunks of the West Bank — giving the UAE’s Prince Mohammed Al Nahyan something to sell to citizens back home.
Until now Israel has had no diplomatic relations with the Gulf Arab states. The deal is therefore another dent — following previous deals with Egypt and Jordan — in the pointless pretence in parts of the Middle East that Israel has no right to exist — or indeed, that it does not exist. As the left-leaning Israeli writer Shany Mor rightly asks: “Has any benefit accrued to the Arab world from this unremitting hostility and denial of the fact of an Israel, if not (dare we say it?) the justice of an Israel?”
Normalisation of relations also brings with it a range of potentially fruitful cultural exchanges, together with more formal agreements such as the exchange of embassies and a resumption of direct flights.
So far, so good. And yet, it is worth asking: cui bono?
US President Donald Trump — whose administration officially brokered the deal — will undoubtedly tout the agreement on the campaign trail as an historical foreign policy success for the White House. Moreover, should Trump win a second term, one can feasibly imagine him giving a tentative green light to further Israeli annexation of the West Bank; though whether the Israelis choose to follow through on that is another matter.
The signs are not particularly auspicious on that front, even if one must factor in Netanyahu’s penchant for nationalistic bombast. In a television address broadcast yesterday in Israel, Mr Netanyahu said annexation plans for the West Bank had merely been “delayed” and remain “on the table”. This may or may not be true: many inside Israel view plans for annexation as dangerous and unfeasible.
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Subscribe“in common with Trump, has botched his country’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic”
Im no fan of Trump, but I don’t understand this criticism.
Considering the vast differences in appropriate response to COVID-19 across the US, isn’t this an issue best left to State governors?
What’s right for New York isn’t likely to be right for Montana.
Did Trump even have the constitutional right to impose harsher lockdown on the states?
Well done sir, you are absolutely correct.
If you wish for a career in journalism, you must, condemn the anti-Christ, Donald Trump, on any and every possible occasion, regardless of the facts.
He’s taking up so much free rent-space in people’s heads. I don’t understand the fear people have of him.
Better than the Biden p.o.s. and obama p.o.s. I’ll take that rental space than the space on the left. They share one brain cell and suck it dry each day.
Uh, I believe you are referring to the p.o.s. we had as president before this one.
You beat me to the comment. It’s just a trope at this point, being echoed by everyone to the left of Ted Cruz. But when you try to pin someone on any metric, you won’t get a straight answer. You’ll just get some emotional outburst about “more deaths than X or Y War and the blood is on his hands”.
I’m not sure what the expectation was here. No deaths? Or 1.4M deaths as many hysteric left wingers were saying in April? Seems anywhere in between these two is license to poo your pants with Drumpf hatred.
All you have to do is just look at where the US stacks up against other countries. 8th in cases per million. 10th in deaths per million.
So are we going to hold the other counties who have done “worse” like Sweden, Italy, Belgium, Spain, et al, to the same standard and hyperventilate about their PMs/Presidents? Or are they off the hook?
Another case of orange-man-bad-ism/TDS.
And how exactly has Israel “botched” their pandemic response? They’re 58th in deaths per million.
If you need to beat the Jews, any old stick will do.
You can’t understand it because it is either complete ignorance or an intentional lie. Either way I call “bullshit”!
Please explain how the president has “botched” anything. I cannot see where he’s done anything wrong, especially in light of the fact that we had a traitor p.o.s. for the previous president.
This has little to do with Israel and Palestine and a lot to do with Israel and Saudi Arabia standing up against Iran. Over the past 6-7 years Iran has been expanding its influence across the whole region.
Most notably through its influence in Iraq across almost all tiers of government, its assistance to Assad in Syria, and its propping up of the the Houthi (i.e. Shia) rebellion in Yemen.
That’s in addition to its continued support of Hezbollah and Hamas.
As for Israel being compared to UAE as a pair of “rival authoritarian elites” – that betrays your bias somewhat. Israel is a democratic country that (at least tries) to have proportional representation across all religions. Saudi is a Sunni theocracy. That the current Israeli government is quite right wing is because that is what the people of Israel voted for. Unless you are suggesting that the elections were false?
I am not an apologist for Israel, but focusing on the Israel/Palestine issue alone whilst all but ignoring Iran’s rocketing regional influence is dishonest. Sadly for many Palestinians, the Gaza issue is a sideshow to much bigger plays, but popular with simplistic commentators.
But this is, isn’t it, a clear case of where the interests of Israel and Europe don’t necessarily align?
Israel rightly understands that Iran is implacably hostile to it; but Iran is not implacably hostile to Europe. Iran is Shia; jihadist activity in Europe has been almost exclusively committed by Sunni extremists and fostered by the propagation of Salafite precepts by our supposed allies in the Gulf whose oil wealth has granted them a disproportionate influence across the Sunni Muslim world.
It’s worth remembering that neoconservatives Richard Perle and David Frum, back in 2002, actually advocated dismembering Saudi Arabia – they made the point that the oil-rich regions are Shia-majority and unhappy under the yoke of the House of Saud. Liberating the Eastern Shia from Riyadh would, of course, have meant giving Tehran a foothold on the peninsula, as they actually obtained in Iraq. I should make clear that I never endorsed our many military interventions in the Middle East and I’m sure I would have opposed Perle and Frum’s proposal too. But I do think it’s probably true to say that the West itself isn’t gravely threatened by increasing Iranian influence in the Middle East and stands to gain something from reduced Saudi influence.
Whether pivoting to an anti-Saudi and cautiously pro-Iranian strategy after 9/11 would have worked, I’ve no idea. But I’m not sure it could have been more disastrous than what we did.
It’s complex isn’t it.
Iran for years has been the direct sponsor of a significant proportion of violent extremist organisations. But the Wahhabism and its offshoots exported from Saudi Arabia, whilst not the same as physically arming and funding terrorism, has been behind most of the terror attacks in the west, as you say.
This is a really interesting article around the topic:
https://www.brookings.edu/r…
If you haven’t got time – the thrust of the piece is that that nature of Sunni/Shia terrorism is different. Because Shia terrorist groups are more often state-sponsored (usually Iran), they tend to focus their efforts around long term, discrete campaigns and objectives along economic/political lines. By contrast, Sunni groups tend to be smaller more fanatical offshoots who use “shock and awe” tactics using social media to amplify the effects of their attacks.
Let’s not forget that Mahmoud Abbas has been filmed telling his supporters “All the land is ours, from the north to the south and from the river (Jordan) to the sea.” One message for the useful idiots in the west, and the truth at home. Hamas and Fatah will never accept a two-state solution, only the annihilation of Israel.
Well said, Mahmoud Abbas is a self delusional nutter.
The Arabs haven’t controlled their own destiny since at least the late ninth century AD, when they started idiotically employing Turkoman ‘slave soldiers’, later called Mamluks.
They were finally ‘liberated’ from Ottoman tyranny (albeit lethargic) by the British Army under command of General Allenby in 1917, and not by the deranged, adolescent, and Oxford educated pygmy, normally referred to as “Lawrence of Arabia”.(5’2″).
If ever Western Shriekers stop supporting Abbas, maybe, even he will realise he has to negotiate sensibly with the Israelis.
I live in hope if not expectation.
It will be a successor – someone in the future – but not Abbas, Abbas is a hoocaust denier who in his mid-late 80’s is not going to reverse every hateful comment he has made regarding Israel.
Yes, but Arab-Muslim Holocaust Deniers hoping to commit genocide by driving Jews into the sea always get a green light as well as lots of cold, hard cash from the very same Western Social Democrats, leftists and liberals so quick to pin the Nazi-Fascist and even antisemite label on any of their conservative political opponents. Even when those opponents are committed Jews, like President Trump’s brilliant speechwriter Stephen Miller. Or indeed on the most philo-semitic and pro-Israel president in American history, Donald J. Trump. Why this grotesque hypocrisy by Western leftists so willing to embrace Muslim antisemites of the worst kind while scorning Western antisemites who identify with the right and nationalism?
I agree with you James.
It may be an historic agreement, but because “Orange Man Bad” is involved it must be a terrible agreement.
An interesting essay, only slightly diminished by your conflation of the Saudis with the Israelis, as noted by A Sperzari Esq, above.
Most of us are thoroughly fed up with this Middle East nonsense, which has been going on now, for over seventy years!
The Israel have won every war, during that time, they are the clear victors, and it’s about time the rest of the Western Shrieker world recognised this, as the UAE have finally done.
As Livy would say “vae victis”.
Like his recent article on the shires, which was basically brexiteer yokel bashing, this one appears to be Israel/ Trump bashing. Predictable and boring.
Obviously James Bloodworth is attracted to bloody dictators like Abbas, whom he euphemistically calls a “leader” of the “West Bank” (does Bloodworth mean the lands of Yehuda and Samaria – their names for thousands of years until an invented people and their European supporters tried to cancel them?). Abbas’ term as president expired more than 10 years ago, but that appears to not bother the author. Nevertheless Bloodworth wants his readers to believe that PM Netanyahu and Pres. Trump are “authoritarian elites” but not his favorite bloody, billionaire thug Abbas. When is Bloodworth going to tell his readers that the Fakistanians already have a state and it is called Jordan?
James writes: “for the Palestinians, any settlement which appears to legitimise Israel’s existing frontiers ” and therefore the occupation ” is far from desirable.” James doesn’t define his terms, but since the Jews pulled out of Gaza 15 years ago, and there is no Israeli occupation there, I presume for him the Palestinians are the Arab population of the West Bank, whom I would call the West Jordanians. As Andrew Shaughnessy noted in another comment, Mahmoud Abbas views all of Israel and the West Bank as occupied territory, so no settlement would be desirable to the West Jordanian autocrat that wouldn’t mean the annihilation of Israel. James might care to remember that the last time the West Jordanians were not occupied by Israel they were under Jordanian rule, so the most promising future for the West Jordanians may be a return to the past.
The headline says “The real winners of the Israel-UAE deal” but the copy doesn’t mention any.
The title “potential winners in several generation’s time” fits, assuming the Israeli or US electorate don’t scupper the plan in the near future. ( No such danger from the UAE’s FNC ) Consider how long it took the English to stop collective hatred of the French and Catholics, though they stopped killing them by statute in 1815 and 1701 respectively. Hopefully the Israel/Arab emnity will clear up quicker in these more enlightened times. The huge majority people in ther MIddle East would love to lay down their arms but they don’t have the playing field to themselves: The remarks about the Sunni/Shia split on Israel hint at what may become a polarisation similar to the cold war. The political groups in USA and Israel who would wreck a rapprochement are left wing, often pro Iran with many anti Jewish racists in their ranks. So just as the political left in the 50s-80s sided with the USSR, Viet Cong, FMLN etc so their successors side with the Revolutionary Guard and their ilk. Perhaps the best expression of this in the UK is the Celtic fans flying the Palestinian flag. I doubt these trouble causers will prevail but they will cause a lot of harm and hate trying.
Definitely a half cup empty man James. There is nothing more disappointing than people talking down great achievements. It is in both Arab and Israeli interests to look for the common ground. To abandon hostility and that is what the agreement achieves. It has the potential to de-escalate because Israel abandons its expansionist plans. Something hard liners did not want. It also required a big show of good faith from the UAE, which was to recognise Israels existence as a legitimate state. Who achieved this, well it wasn’t Sleepy, Creepy Joe or antisemitic Kamala Harris was it? No those two want to back up the middle east process to full hostilities, pay Hesbola trillions to continue its practices of terrorism.
Wake up there are no neat or perfect solutions to complex problems. There are pragmatic compromises. That is what this is and we used to know that this is as good as it gets.
This is a good deal for the Middle East and is a way of containing the ambitions of Iran. Well done, President Trump, and I only hope that more Arab countries will sign on.
Looking at the wider Arab world, whether it’s Libya, Iraq, Syria, Yemen or Lebanon, life is about terror and weaponry. It is a violent neighbourhood.
Let the Arabs, and the islamic jihadists fight amongst themselves, whilst modern day Israel, the tiny Jewish state of some 6 million Jews and 2 million Israeli Arabs, be a light unto the nations, where peace, democracy and life prevail.
The comments below are quite bizarre and not the intelligent things I have become used to during the SARS-Cov-2 business. I guess it’s because anti-maskers like myself are probably presumed to be ‘right-wing’ and therefore Zionist/Racist. The simple fact is that the world powers displaced the native Palestinian people in 1948 and invited the religion picked on by Hitler to replace the ethically indigenous, Semitic people. Someone then invented the idea to call the immigrants from Russia, USA etc Semite even though they are con-joined not by ethnicity but by religion. Imagine inviting South American and Irish Catholics to live in Yorkshire and throwing out the locals, then letting the immigrants vote and calling it democratic???
this is such a load of rubbish, you have zero knowledge of history, the so-called palestinians of today are not the wandering bedouins of the past, Jewish settlement in Israel has been almost continuous for nearly four thousand years, the Jewish people did not have a modern political state until 1948, and more Jews were thrown out of Arab countries after the state was created than Arabs who voluntarily left Israel.
The Arab population of Palestine was largely settled and distinct from “wandering Bedouin”. And whilst you are right to suggest that there was also Jewish settlement, they were very much a minority. I don’t think any nation would relish or deserve what happened to the Palestinians.
That is a slight oversimplification, if I may so. The Ottoman census, of I think 1907, established that about 10% (800,000) of the population of Palestine were Jews.
In 1916 various New York, Jewish financiers, lead by Paul Warburg and others raised enormous amounts of cash so that ‘we’ might continue and hopefully win the Great War against the “Hun”.
Despite starting the war as the greatest creditor nation since Ancient Rome, by 1916 our fiscally feeble allies, the French, Russians and Italians were nearly bankrupt and thus we had to “bail them out” or accept defeat. Jewish capital was essential, if victory was to be achieved.
Thus it came as no surprise that in late 1917, Arthur Balfour, the Foreign Secretary, issued his eponymous Declaration stating that HMG would help establish a Jewish “National home” in Palestine, should ‘we’ wrest the place from the Ottoman Turks. By now off course the USA had also,very conveniently, entered the war, and thanks to titanic blunders by the “Hun” victory was achieved in late 1918.
Bar for the antics of the homicidal pygmy, better known as TE Lawrence, or more romantically as ” Lawrence of Arabia”, the Arab contribution to victory had been minimal, which is hardly surprising after centuries of Ottoman rule.
Thus the Jews were to receive their just reward, for the novel services they had rendered. Naturally, they would still have wait thirty years until 1948, for the British Bulldog to finally release the Palestinian bone.
No the whole population of Palestine didn’t exceed 800,000 until the 1920s. The population just before the 1st WW was estimated to be 700,000 of which 14% were Jews.
It is an old trope that the Jews only received Israel because of the Holocaust – maybe it could be argued that it helped push the UN to recognise the newly founded state of Israel.
“the British Bulldog to finally release the Palestinian bone” . Not really – Britain was too cowardly to decide what to do and threw it over to the UN to decide..
The key to the founding of Israel is the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne long before the Holocast.,
You’re being a bit pedantic aren’t you? 700k-800k etc? My point, which seems to have eluded you, is that there already was a substantial minority of Jews in Palestine in 1914.
“Britain was too cowardly to decide what to do and threw it over to the UN to decide”. You must know that is nonsense? Legally Britain was the Mandate Authority for the League of Nations, which subsequently become the UN. Thus Palestine was never formally part of the British Empire. ‘We’ held the place in trust so to speak, for another authority.
What has the Holocaust got to do with this? Nothing. More grandstanding perhaps?
Ditto the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. The pivotal moment was the Balfour Declaration of 1917, (the Chicken and Egg moment if you like).
You call it pedantry – I call t accuracy. Yes if that was your point then it eluded me because it wasn’t clear.
No I disagree the Balfour Declaration was obviously important but it was just that – a declaration – during wartime. It was the Treaty which cemented things.
No its not nonsense.Yes Britain had the mandate. As such it could have therefore decided how to proceed They tried to with the Peel commission but the Arabs rejected it and then the British Government stated “”the political, administrative and financial difficulties involved in the proposal to create independent Arab and Jewish States inside Palestine are so great that this solution of the problem is impracticable” so then it handed it over to the UN which decided on partition anyway as the answer.
Your accuracy and punctuation have deserted you.
You must try harder, both you and I know you can do better.
I know I can always do better. However, I believe I am correct on the points I am making (who knew you could make mistakes while typing on a train going to work). Anyway you seem to have a tendency towards pomposity, I am sure you can do better too.
You should try to avoid personal insults, you only demean yourself.
Your remark ” I call (I)t accuracy ” aroused my suspicion that you are a complete bluffer!
In ‘The Population of Palestine. Population History and Statistics of the Late Ottoman Period and the Mandate’, Justin McCarthy gives the figures for 1914 thus: Muslim Arabs 657K, Christian Arabs, 81K, Jews, 59K. That gives a grand total of 797K, of which 7.5% were Jews.
I think even you will agree that is far closer to my figures of 800K and 10% Jews, than your figures of 700K and 14% Jews. QED?
So, where did you get your figures from, if I may ask?
I repeat my earlier question, what has the Holocaust got to do with any of this? Or are you just grandstanding?
Finally, when His Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs makes a statement such as Arthur Balfour did, the world takes note (at least it did in (1917).
San Remo and Lausanne merely validated his declaration, that HMG intended to create a National Home the Jews. “Iacta alea est” as you might say.
You state I should avoid personal insults and then go on a ad hominem attack – interesting.
No I am not a bluffer – I am not interested and couldn’t be bothered. My numbers (amongst other sources) came from the Jewish Virtual Library which gives the figures in 1914 as 94,000 Jews , 595,000 non-Jews and 690,000 in total.
Regarding the Balfour Declaration, I don’t dispute its importance, but until something is signed it carries little weight, especially if the declaration is made during wartime. Balfour was no longer Foreign Secretary when the treaty of San Remo was signed and the PM had changed. Further San Remo is still valid today because the UN stated previous treaties would be honoured and inherited.
The fact that Balfour was effectively a Christian Zionist I think was more important to his Declaration than Jewish Finance. It also meant that future governments may not have taken his viewpoint. Indeed Britain during the late 20s and 30s gave the Arab views more weight -probably because they had the oil.
Regarding the Holocaust, the point was that many proffer that Israel was only created for the Jews as some kind of compensation for that tragedy (e.g. many Palestinian Arabs). In your initial post you seem to imply that it was created because Jewish bankers helped finance WWI. I was merely responding to that. I just thought the reply you gave was not balanced. We just need agree to disagree. Anyway have a nice day.
If you accuse someone of pomposity you must expect to be chastised. Perhaps you were a “sensitive child”, as we used to say?
Thank you for rising from your torpor and producing your figures/sources. There seems to be quite a discrepancy about the actual number of Jews present in 1914. However, as I’m sure you will agree, either way, there was a substantial minority population of Jews already well established.
I never mentioned the Holocaust, nor should you have done. It is completely irrelevant to this discussion. I can only wonder at your motives.
Anyway we must both beg to disagree. All the best.
earlier, San Remo
Sorry, yes you of course are right.
Many comments in this discussion to agree with so I’ll just throw in a couple of interesting statements I think relevant to the Israel/Palestine situation and maybe, I suspect, overlooked by the author of this article.
The first made by a leader in the PLO in 1977 (Zuheir Mohsen)
“The Palestinian people do not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.”
The other by Martin Luther King in 1968
“Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all of our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity and the right to use whatever sea lanes it needs. I see Israel, and never mind saying it, as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality.”
Israel is now an apartheid state running the largest prison in the world – gaza. Injustice is a great way to prevent peace.
Israel should be one – non sectarian – state with equal rights for all it’s citizens. And reparations should be paid to Palestinians who’s land was taken.
Why? Not all peoples have to subscribe to our trendy Western fad for non-sectarian multi-culturalism. If another way is how they wish to live in their country, let them live how they see fit. It is none of our business to be the world’s busybody.
And why do you only make these demands of Israel? Why do you so ferociously condemn the region’s only functioning democracy? Once the Arab states have become the kind of liberal democratic clones you wish every state to be, only then will your one-sided, knee-jerk condemnation of Israel not look like tired old anti-Semitism.
Israel is less apartheid than Northern Ireland. Gaza is run from Tehran. The intersts and lives of Transjordanians not living in Jordan have been sacrificed by the remaining arabs and persians on the alter of destroying Israel. It seems that the sunies now see the shiites as a bigger threat. Rightly so. What is most silly is that the peace dividend would be greatest for the arabs.
Your suggestion of what Israel should be is just a polite way of describing the destruction if the Jewish State which seems prejudiced.
“Transjordanians not living in Jordan” – as they are on the West Bank of the river, they are by definition “Cisjordanians”. (The French term for “the West Bank” is in fact “Cisjordanie”. Likewise, the Romans referred to “Cisalpine Gaul” for the Gaul-inhabited portion of what is now Italy between the Apennines and the Alps; Gaulish territory beyond the Alps was “Transalpine Gaul”).
Also rather amusingly called Gallia Comata, by the Romans, as you may know, which translates as Long-haired Gaul.
another history and reality ignoramus,
if you were in Israel over the past few days you would have seen thousands – literally thousands of Arabs crowding the beaches of Israel, side by side with Jews and non-Jews from many different backgrounds, ex-Russian christians with crosses around their necks,
no signs saying no Arabs or palestinians, no signs at restaurants saying no Arabs or palestinians admitted, no diffrerent entrances to toilet facilities,
people like you spread bigotry and hatred by making such totally false allegations that you have no basis for whatsoever.
No “palestinian” land was taken, you have been fed false propaganda, there never has been a palestinian entity until the last few years, 5 Arab countries attacked Israel and tried to destroy it when it was established in May 1948, they lost, they lost again in 1967 when Nasser closed the water passage trying to throttle Israel, and Hussein of Jordan believed Nasser’s lies that he had conquered Tel Aviv and so Hussein lost what territory they had illegally taken.
Read some real history, not propaganda.
Vae victis!
Then why do the Arabs not only of Israel but those occupying the Jewish biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria enjoy one of the highest life expectancy’s of Arabs anywhere? Why do Israeli Arabs have the highest incomes of Arabs anywhere outside of the oil-rich Arab Gulf States? Why are Arabs in Israel the only Arabs anywhere that enjoy all democratic freedoms enjoyed by no other Arabs or indeed Muslims in any Muslim country? Why do the sit on the Israeli Supreme Court and in the Israel Knesset (parliament))? Sir, why do you spread vile, poisonous lies in the public sphere. Perhaps environmentalists should put you out of business since your grotesque slander threatens humanity more than global warming ever will.