Israel And The Emirates Sign The “Abraham Accords”
Written by Thierry MEYSSAN on 25/09/2020
The situation in the Middle East has been blocked since the Oslo Accords
signed by Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat in 1993. They were supplemented by
the Jericho-Gaza Agreement, which recognizes certain prerogatives of the
Palestinian Authority, and the Wadi Araba Agreements, which concluded peace
between Israel and Jordan.
At the time, the Israeli government intended to separate definitively from
the Palestinians. It was ready to do so by creating a Palestinian pseudo-state,
devoid of several attributes of sovereignty, including an independent army and
finances. Labour’s Yitzhak Rabin had previously experimented with Bantustans in
South Africa, where Israel was advising the apartheid regime. Another
experiment took place in Guatemala with a Mayan tribe under General Efraín Ríos
Montt.
Yasser Arafat accepted the Oslo Accords to derail the process of the Madrid
Conference (1991). Presidents George W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev had tried to
impose peace on Israel by removing Arafat from the international scene with the
support of Arab leaders.
Despite all this, many commentators believed that the Oslo Accords could
bring peace.
In any case, 27 years later, nothing positive has limited the suffering of
the Palestinian people, but the state of Israel has been gradually transformed
from within. Today this country is divided into two antagonistic camps, as
evidenced by its government, the only one in the world to have two Prime
Ministers at the same time. On the one hand the partisans of British
colonialism behind the first Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanhyahu, on the other
hand the partisans of a normalization of the country and its relations with its
neighbors, behind the second Prime Minister, Benny Gantz. This
two-headed system reflects the incompatibility of these two projects. Each camp
paralyzes its rival. Only time will come to end the colonial project of
conquering Greater Israel from the banks of the Nile to those of the Euphrates,
the comet tail of an outdated era.
Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States has implemented
the Rumsfeld/Cebrowski strategy aimed at adapting the US army to the needs of a
new form of capitalism based no longer on the production of goods and services,
but on financial engineering. To do this, they began an “endless war” of
destruction of state structures throughout the “broader Middle East” without
taking into account their friends and enemies. In two decades, the region
became cursed for its inhabitants. Afghanistan, then Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen
are the theater of wars presented as lasting a few weeks, but which last
indefinitely, without perspective.
When Donald Trump was elected president, he promised to put an end to the
“endless wars” and to bring US soldiers home. In this spirit, he gave carte
blanche to his special adviser and nevertheless son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The
fact that President Trump is supported in his country by Zionist Christians and
that Jared Kushner is an Orthodox Jew has led many commentators to portray them
as friends of Israel. If they do indeed have an electoral interest in letting
this be believed, it is not at all their approach to the Middle East. They
intend to defend the interests of the American people, and not those of the
Israelis, by substituting trade relations for war on the model of President
Andrew Jackson (1829-37). Jackson managed to prevent the disappearance of the
Indians he had fought as a general, although only the Cherokees signed the agreement
he proposed. Today they have become the largest Native American tribe, despite
the infamous episode of the “Trail of Tears”.
For three years, Jared Kushner travelled through the region. He was able to
see for himself how much fear and hatred had developed there. For 75 years,
Israel has persisted in violating all UN resolutions that concern it and
continues its slow and inexorable nibbling of Arab territory. The negotiator
reached only one conclusion: International Law is powerless because almost no one
– with the notable exception of Bush Sr. and Gorbachev – has wanted to really
apply it since the partition plan for Palestine in 1947. Because of the
inaction of the international community, its application if it were to happen
today would add injustice to injustice.
Kushner worked on many hypotheses,
including the unification of the Palestinian people around Jordan and the
linking of Gaza to Egypt. In June 2019, he presented proposals for the economic
development of the Palestinian territories at a conference in Bahrain (the
“deal of the century”). Rather than negotiating anything, the idea was to
quantify what everyone would gain from peace. In the end, he managed, on September
13, 2020, to get a secret agreement signed in Washington between the United
Arab Emirates and Israel. The agreement was formalized two days later, on September 15, in a watered-down version.”
The press in the Emirates does not have the same version of the events as
that of Israel. None of them has an interest in expressing itself frankly.
As always, the most important thing is the secret part: Israel was forced
to renounce in writing its plans for annexation (including the territories
allegedly “offered” by Donald Trump in the “deal of the century” project) and
to let Dubai Ports World (known as “DP World”) take over the port of Haifa,
from which the Chinese have just been ejected.
This agreement is in line with the ideas of the second Israeli Prime
Minister Benny Gantz, but represents a disaster for the camp of the first Prime
Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Not having read the secret part of the agreements myself, I do not know if
it clearly indicates the renunciation of annexing the Syrian Golan Heights,
occupied since 1967, and the Lebanese Shebaa Farms, occupied since 1982.
Similarly, I do not know whether compensation is provided for the port of
Beirut, since it is clear that its eventual reconstruction would be detrimental
both to Israel and to the Emirates’ investments in Haifa. However, the Lebanese
President, Michel Aoun, has already publicly evoked a real estate construction
project instead of the port of Beirut.
In order to make this treaty acceptable to all parties, it has been named
“Abraham Accords”, after the common father of Judaism and Islam. The paternity
was attributed, to the great joy of Benny Gantz, to the “outstretched hand”
(sic) of Benjamin Netanyahu, his toughest opponent. Finally, Bahrain was
associated with it.
This last point aims to mount the new regional role that Washington has
granted to the Emirates in replacement of Saudi Arabia. As we announced, it is
now Abu Dhabi and no longer Riyadh that represents US interests in the Arab world Other Arab states are
invited to follow Bahrain’s example.
The Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, has not had harsh words against
the Emirati “betrayal”. He was taken up both by those who remain hostile to
peace (the Iranian ayatollahs) and by those who remain committed to the Oslo
Accords and the two-state solution. Indeed, by formalizing diplomatic relations
between Israel and the new Arab leader, the Emirates, the Abraham Accords turn
the page on the Oslo Accords. The palm of hypocrisy goes to the European Union,
which persists in defending international law in theory and violating it in
practice.
If President Trump is re-elected and Jared Kushner continues his work, the
Israeli-Emirati agreements will be remembered as the moment when Israelis and
Arabs regained the right to speak to each other, just as the overthrow of the
Berlin Wall marked the moment when East Germans regained the right to speak to
their relatives in the West. On the contrary, if Joe Biden is elected, Israel’s
nibbling of Arab territories and the “endless war” will resume throughout the
region.
Relations between Israel and the Emirates had long since stabilized without
a peace treaty since there was never a declared war between them. The Emirates
have been secretly buying arms from the Jewish state for the past decade. Over
time this trade has increased, especially in terms of telephone interceptions
and internet surveillance. In addition, an Israeli embassy was already
operating under cover of an intelligence agency.
In addition, an Israeli embassy was already operating under cover of a
delegation to an obscure UN body in the Emirates. However, the “Abraham
Accords” challenge the dominant Arab-Israeli discourse and shake up internal
relations in the entire region.
Source: Voltaire Network
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