Commentary: Israel, UAE, Bahrain: Big Deal?

by Larry Brook

When I was in elementary school, a local computer company had a conference room that didn’t really look like a formal conference room, with its 1970s vibe. A plaque on the door said “Big Deal Room.”

Back then, not familiar with the corporate world of big deals, I assumed it was an office joke — big deal, as in “so what.”

It seems that dichotomy of opinion has colored reaction to the recent normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and with Bahrain. Big Deal or big deal?

Many, including the ever-accurate Washington Post, have insisted that this round of diplomatic relations isn’t a big deal, because Israel has never met The United Arab Emirates or Bahrain on the battlefield. They see this as normalization between countries that never went to war with each other. In other words, some great achievement, huh?

Yes, Israel never met either of those countries on the battlefield of war. However, both the UAE in Bahrain have long been soldiers in the economic, diplomatic and philosophical war against the world’s only Jewish state.

They have been part of the solid wall of Arab rejectionism of Israel’s very existence, which goes back to the Arab League’s rejection of a Jewish state in any borders since Israel was established.

When Bahrain and UAE became independent of British rule in 1971, they joined the Arab League and were part of the solid anti-Israel Arab-Soviet voting bloc at the United Nations, at a time when it was said that the Arabs could introduce a resolution stating the world is a cube with a green tassel hanging from each corner, and it would pass 187-2, with the U.S. and Israel being the two.

Bahrain and the UAE were huge supporters of the ongoing Arab boycott of Israel, which not only extended to all products made in Israel, but products of international companies that did business in Israel. People forget that for a long time you could find Coca-Cola only in Israel and not in Arab states, while Pepsi was available in Arab states, but the only way to find one in Israel was to go to an Arab village, where it had been imported.

They were also part of the Arab oil embargoes in the 1970s, when OPEC decided to punish the West for its support of Israel.

The Emirates have also been huge diplomatic and financial supporters of the Palestinians, and it has been standard wisdom for a long time — erroneously — that the source of instability in the Middle East has been Israel and the lack of a resolution with the Palestinians. Former Secretary of State John Kerry insisted in 2016 that the only way any Arab state would ever have relations with Israel is if the Palestinian situation were finally resolved.

But with Iran growing as an existential threat to regimes throughout the region, along with the realization that the Palestinian leadership has no interest in running a state but is stuck in the mode of anti-Israel revolution while the leadership enriches itself through siphoning off foreign aid, much of the Arab world has come to realize that Israel is not a threat to them, and that waiting on the Palestinians to come to their senses is like waiting for Vanderbilt to win the College Football Playoff.

With the green movement worldwide and American energy independence, economies built solely on oil are no longer sustainable long term, and these Gulf countries need to figure out a way to diversify their economies. They see Israel’s Start-Up Nation and want to be part of it, for their own futures.

It is also interesting to see how this process is playing out within the UAE and Bahrain. The peace accords with Egypt and Jordan were done by leaders, without selling it to the people. Anti-Israel incitement is still very common in both countries, and you don’t see Egyptian or Jordanian tourists coming to Jerusalem to visit Muslim holy sites — or anything else.

These agreements are completely different, as there is great enthusiasm on both sides. Business deals have been announced virtually from day one. The UAE told its hotels to provide kosher dining options. It was a scramble to see which national airlines would be first to announce direct flights to and from Tel Aviv. Israelis are already seeing ads to purchase real estate and condos in the UAE, and it is expected that there will be a lot of tourism back and forth.

The rhetoric has not been a begrudging acknowledgement that Israel is here to stay, it has been that Israel and the Jewish people are part of the Middle East. Contrast that with the jihadist vision that Jews or any non-Muslim can’t rule over what is seen as Muslim lands, a sentiment that has been the philosophical underpinning of the Arab war against Israel from the beginning.

Instead, in the UAE there is now a chief rabbi for the Jewish community, and the Abrahamic Family House is currently under construction and will include a mosque, a church and a synagogue at the same location.

It may seem hard to fathom, but a very convincing argument can be made that it is much easier and safer to walk down the street visibly as a Jew in the Emirates than on the streets of Paris, Brussels or Stockholm.

And other countries in the region will be coming on board soon. Speculation is that Sudan will be one of those countries. Sudan of course, is known for the famous “three noes” meeting after the 1967 war, when Israel was looking to make peace and a united Arab League insisted that there would never be peace with Israel, or even recognition of Israel’s existence.

Because of Sudan’s hostility, the rescue of Ethiopian Jewry that took place partly in Sudan in the 1980s had to be done in a highly secretive manner, lest the Sudanese government find out.
These accords herald a huge shift in the Middle East. When you have the King of Saudi Arabia at the United Nations calling for the disarmament not of Israel, but of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, something has definitely changed.

Some who are critical of the recent accords slam Israel for even signing them, because those Gulf countries are autocratic regimes. Israel is making deals with dictatorships, they say. Of course, most other countries in the world, including the United States, Britain, the European Union, the rest of the Arab world… have relations with UAE and Bahrain. Only Israel is expected to meet some purity test in who they can have diplomatic relations with.

Besides, how exactly would one describe the regimes ruling over the territories and Gaza, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas? Yet Israel is supposed to make a deal with them first.

For those who are laser-focused on the Palestinians and oppose Israel out of habit, this agreement is being portrayed as a betrayal. It is comical to watch organizations that claim to be for peace and harmony condemning a peace agreement. It goes to show where their true heart lies, and that is in a Middle East that is still trying to get rid of Israel.

There are others who support Israel but disparage these accords because of where they came from — the Trump administration. Had this happened under Obama, many of these same individuals would be turning cartwheels in the streets and calling for a second Nobel Peace Prize for Obama instead of scoffing at the notion that Trump might deserve one.

In fact, the Obama/Biden administration does deserve credit for this. By trying to prop up and strengthen the Iranian regime, Obama demonstrated to the rest of the Middle East that they need to come together to work against the Iranian threat, and not rely on the U.S. having their back — or being on the same side.

Of course, some have also said that Trump’s unpredictability added to the determination of these Arab countries to come to an agreement with Israel, in case this new alliance has to go it alone because the U.S. under Trump does not want to get involved in any eventual conflict.

Regardless of the reasons, it is clear that the sands have completely shifted in the Middle East, and the UAE announcement, which took so many by surprise, may turn out to be one of the most significant developments in Middle East history.

If this whole exercise results in the Palestinian people getting a reality check that seeking the destruction of Israel will continue to get them nowhere, and convinces them that it is time for a new approach, so much the better.

Who knows, this could wind up being the one bright spot of 2020.

(Larry Brook is editor/publisher of Southern Jewish Life, where this first appeared, and Israel InSight).