While there is little gainsaying that the UAE-Israel deal will have some important implications for the Middle East, the wide-spread perception that the US played a direct role in facilitating this breakthrough appears to be a complete misreading of the process that actually produced this deal. While the US did have its own peace plan, known as the ‘deal of the century’, the actual deal is far from what the Trump administration had envisioned and proposed. On top of it is the fact that the UAE-Israel have a history of secret relations and that these were largely independent of the US or the Trump administration. Besides it, the UAE is not the only country Israel has established relations with, although it is to-date the only Gulf state that has recognized Israel. What it means is Israel has been working with several Gulf states for quite some time and that the deal with the UAE is a result of these secret relations, spanning over many years, if not many decades.
As it stands, the current deal negates, in many ways, the Trump administration’s ‘deal of the century.’ If the ‘deal of the century’ had proposed annexation of about 30 per cent of the West Bank, including Jordan valley, the current deal prevents annexation all together. This is a significant departure from the US proposed deal, indicating the political will on the part of the both the UAE and Israel to design a regional configuration that the countries can hold. The UAE, by preventing annexation all together, has earned a medal that it can use to silence the critics.
If the US sponsored deal had been imposed on the Middle East, it would have created a political storm in the entire Arab world, negating all prospects of normalization that the UAE’s current leadership has been seeking for years now—something that Yousef Al Otaiba, the UAE’s ambassador to the US, confirmed in an Op-Ed he wrote in Hebrew for a leading Israeli newspaper, Yediot Aharonot. Otaiba said:
“Annexation will also harden Arab views of Israel just when Emirati initiatives have been opening the space for cultural exchange and broader understanding of Israel and Judaism.
The UAE has encouraged Israelis to think about the upside of more open and normal links. And we have done the same among Emiratis and with Arabs more broadly.”
Otaiba, in fact, took the US proposed plan of annexation to the cleaners and argued that “annexation is a misguided provocation of another order. And continued talk of normalization would be just mistaken hope for better relations with the Arab states.” Annexation would, therefore, be anti-normalization. Normalization, according to the UAE, lies in “Greater security. Direct links. Expanded markets. Growing acceptance.”
What Otaiba’s assertions and his emphasis on establish bi-lateral ‘normal’ relations also reveal is that the underlying logic of the ‘deal of the century’ i.e., that past mediation and efforts towards establishing bi-lateral relations between Israel and the Arab states have failed, was not based upon a correct reading of geo-political dynamics of the Gulf and Israel’s relations with them.
The assertion of lack of comprehensiveness also fundamentally ignored the record of extensive negotiations and detailed work throughout successive rounds of mediation and diplomacy over the past 25 years. As such, it was these extensive negotiations going on for decades that produced the current deal and rejected the US sponsored ‘deal of the century.’
As such, there is a reason why the deal is anti-annexation. In addition to the above discussed factors, a crucial reason why the deal is anti-annexation is evolving geo-politics than a mere threat of backlash from within the Arab world.
By making Israel agree to a plan that involves a potential normalization with key Gulf states, the UAE—-which is already increasingly projecting itself as the new leader of the Arab world, replacing Saudi Arabia—is seeking to build and lead a grand anti-Iran alliance that includes Israel as its key partner. There is no denying that the announcement of the deal has already flared tensions up between Iran and the UAE.
An anti-annexation deal is the key to this alliance and is the carrot that both the UAE and Israel are offering to other Gulf states in exchange for recognition, acceptance and full normalization.
All the Gulf states have reasons to believe that China’s large-scale investments in Iran will transform its economy, boosting its military power directly as well. With the Trump presidency quite likely to face rejection in the up-coming elections, there is a growing concern in Israel and the Guld states that Joe Biden will reverse the strategy of “maximum pressure” and may even be prepared to re-entre JCPoA, making its own ‘normalization’ with Iran, and continuing the Obama administration’s plans of military retrenchment from the Middle East. Such a probability only makes the deal a response to the changing regional atmosphere.
In this context, the only role the US played in this deal is that it proposed ideas that wouldn’t have served the Gulf states’ interests, making the UAE and Israel to engage in a strategic process that involved crucial concessions, promising all carrots and no sticks.
Salman Rafi Sheikh, research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
