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Palestinians face multiple dilemmas
It was hardly surprising, given what had just happened, that the Palestinian foreign minister, Riyad al-Maliki, announced on September 22 that he would not be chairing sessions of the Arab League for the next six months. The problem was that the league had failed to condemn the decision by the UAE and Bahrain to normalize their relations with Israel.
The Palestinian Authority saw those moves as a betrayal. It was a flagrant breach, in its view, of the Arab Peace Initiative (API) of 2002, which conditioned recognising the Jewish state on achieving a “comprehensive peace agreement” between it and the Palestinians. That, of course, remains as remote as ever.
Maliki and other Palestinian officials simply ignored the argument, made by the UAE, that by agreeing to sign the “Abraham Accords” they had secured a commitment from Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, not to go ahead with his long-threatened annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank. But it did not help the Emirati narrative when Netanyahu insisted that annexation had simply been postponed.
Egypt and Jordan, which signed their peace treaties with Israel in 1979 and 1994 respectively, had at least fought several wars with their neighbour. But the two Gulf states, which never did, were open about pursuing their own national interests - especially with regard to their common enemy Iran. An additional motive was wanting to please President Donald Trump, and especially his Christian Evangelical supporters, on the eve of the most important American presidential election in living memory.
Ordinary Palestinians reacted to this geopolitical drama with resignation. Small protests were held in Ramallah and elsewhere in the West Bank but there was a sense of weariness at the grimly familiar understanding that Arab governments do not care about the fate of what remains of Palestine – 53 years after Israel’s stunning 1967 victory.
It has now been over four decades since the last Arab-Israeli war. The Arab boycott of Israel is also a thing of the past. In a regional sense, the conflict is effectively over. The terms for peace were laid out in 2002 in the API.
Speculation is rife about whether more Arab states will follow these taboo-breaking moves. Attention has focused on Saudi Arabia, which is widely assumed to have given Bahrain the green light to go ahead while Riyadh considers its future options. Oman is also considered a likely candidate, as are Sudan and Morocco. “I’m delighted Trump is doing it,” said one former Israeli official. “It’s great for Israel. It just ratifies what has been going on under the table, but it’s a major psychological breakthrough.”
It is rare to hear Palestinians praise the deal, but one is Mohammed Dajani, who took his university students to Auschwitz to encourage empathy with and understanding of Israelis about the Nazi Holocaust. “Having these countries start to build relations with Israel would make Israel feel more safe to be able to deal with the Palestinians and to give the Palestinians their rights,” he said.
It is hard to predict what will happen next. The UAE and Bahrain clearly hope that by building open relations with Israel - whether economic, security or technological – they will demonstrate that it is in Israel’s self-interest to continue to normalize with Arab countries – and benefit from peace with an independent Palestinian state in its own backyard.
But it is clear that Palestinians themselves now face a major dilemma. Defiant words will not suffice. ”We have dignity, martyrs, prisoners and refugee camps of glory, and this is enough for us,” wrote the Palestinian ambassador to the Arab League. Reacting to the news that Netanyahu had ordered the construction of 5,000 new settlement units in the West Bank, Hanan Ashrawi of the PLO executive committee tweeted sarcastically: ”Maybe they should start settlement enterprises in UAE and Bahrain instead.”
Palestinians themselves need new allies and friends. Iran, which presents itself as a supporter, is problematic because of its tense relations with the US and western countries. Turkey is another possibility but its reputation has been damaged by the pursuit of assertive foreign and security policies in Syria and Libya. Qatar is another candidate, as is Russia.
And there are internal implications too. Fatah, which governs the West Bank, and Hamas in Gaza have long tried and failed to overcome their differences in order to one day establish a united Palestinian leadership. It is clearer than ever that that must happen because disunity encourages Arab states to pursue their own interests. Achieving this, however, will take time, with political reforms and parliamentary elections overdue: the last polls took place in 2006.
Mahmoud Abbas, now aged 84, has been PA president since Yasser Arafat died in 2004, 16 years into what should have been a four-year term. He personifies an ageing and out-of-touch leadership – and one which benefits from its status as the guardians of the Oslo Accords. A new generation and better-connected leaders is vital. International donors are keen to support technocrats and to protect ruling elites. But given what has happened, something clearly has to change.
IAN BLACK
