Israel and the UAE just struck a historic peace deal. It’s a big win for Trump.
A lot of details remain to be worked out, but this is still a really big agreement.
- On Thursday, Israel and the United Arab Emirates announced a historic peace deal. The agreement calls for the normalization of relations, cooperation in the search for a coronavirus vaccine, and the temporary suspension of Israel’s annexation efforts in the West Bank. [Vox / Alex Ward]
- The deal makes the UAE just the third Arab country to establish a formal diplomatic relationship with Israel, and both countries say they plan to establish embassies now that the agreement is in place. [CNN / Betsy Klein]
- It’s also backed by the US and by Trump, who said on Thursday that UAE and Israel representatives will meet at the White House for a signing ceremony in the near future. [WSJ / Felicia Schwartz]
- But it's unclear how long annexation efforts will remain suspended: On Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that "there is no change to our plans to apply sovereignty over Judea and Samaria" — the biblical name for the West Bank often used in Israel. [Twitter / Raphael Ahren]
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For the past 16 months, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had doggedly pursued a right-wing dream that he saw as securing his legacy: annexing West Bank territory that the Palestinians counted on for a future state, potentially dealing a death blow to a two-state solution.
On Thursday, with his annexation plan already running aground, Mr. Netanyahu abruptly walked away from it. Instead, he exulted in a potential legacy achievement of an entirely different character — one that, unlike annexation, could only improve Israel’s ties with the West and much of the Arab world.
The announcement in Washington that the United Arab Emirates had agreed to a “full normalization of relations” with Israel in exchange for Mr. Netanyahu’s agreement to “suspend” his annexation push amounted to a breathtaking turnabout for the veteran Israeli premier.
His drive for sovereignty on the West Bank had pushed Mr. Netanyahu into a corner: He was hectored by European leaders, rebuffed by his coalition partners, and distracted from a pandemic that was rapidly spiraling out of his control, even as the goal of annexation seemed ever more elusive.
But the agreement with the Emiratis allowed Mr. Netanyahu, who has craved a historic achievement to cap his tenure as Israel’s longest-serving leader, to rank himself alongside Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin, forerunners who struck peace accords with the nation’s former bitter enemies, Egypt and Jordan.
The agreement allows the U.A.E., too, to enhance its international standing, which has been deeply damaged over its central role in a war that has turned Yemen into a humanitarian disaster, and over its proxy role in the conflict ravaging Libya. By making an end to annexation the price for bringing into the open a robust diplomatic relationship that had long been one of the Middle East’s worst-kept secrets,
Dennis Ross, a former Middle East negotiator for Republican and Democratic administrations, said that another lure for the Emiratis was the possibility of obtaining advanced weaponry they have long sought, which the United States sells only to countries at peace with Israel to preserve its qualitative military edge in the region.
The rapprochement underscored the shifting political dynamics of a region where Sunni Arab states increasingly see Iran as a greater enemy than Israel and are less willing to condition relations on a resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians. But the big player remains Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s richest country and caretaker of the Islamic holy sites in Mecca and Medina. Analysts said they suspected that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, would like to take such a step but will refrain given conservative elements in his country.
“This is all about Trump being able to say, ‘Look what a great dealmaker I am, I’ve brought peace to the Middle East,’ and about Bibi being able to distract Israelis for a few hours,” said Anshel Pfeffer, a biographer of Mr. Netanyahu, referring to him by his nickname. Mr. Pfeffer had boldly predicted in May that the prime minister would never fulfill his annexation pledges.
Meanwhile Palestinians felt abandoned by an Arab nation leaving them to remain locked in an untenable status quo even without the threat of annexation.
For Mr. Netanyahu, the diplomatic coup came as a throwback of sorts to a time before the coronavirus, before he required three elections to defeat a political novice and form a government, before his indictment on corruption charges including bribery threatened to not only end his career but also send him to prison.
His stock had momentarily soared early in the pandemic, but it has plunged since: Israel’s caseload now is greater than China’s, its hospital system is approaching overload and its schools are planning a reopening that many fear will be a disaster.
More than 800,000 Israelis are out of work, and protesters have been flooding the streets and clamoring outside Mr. Netanyahu’s residence several times a week in a demonstration of sustained political anger that experts say modern Jerusalem has never seen.
With his criminal trial set to ramp up early next year, Mr. Netanyahu has threatened to take Israel to a fourth election, in hopes of legislating his way out of the dock. But a poll this week showed him again falling short of a majority in Parliament.
“He wasn’t functioning the way he was expected to, and this is the first time in a long period where he shows leadership and brings to the table something that no other politician allegedly can,” Ms.Shimrit Meir, an Israeli analyst of the Arab world said. “The subtext is that he’s still got it: He’s still a leader, and the others are merely politicians.” Dahlia Scheindlin, a left-wing analyst and pollster, said that even Israelis who dislike Mr. Netanyahu see him as the country’s foremost statesman. “He knows that it keeps the crown of ‘King Bibi’ on his head in the country’s eyes,” she said.
He reminded critics that he had long promised that Israel could gain international acceptance even without a settlement with the Palestinians.