ISRAEL AND THE UAE AND ISRAEL IDEOLOGICAL DEBATES

ISRAEL AND THE UAE AND ISRAEL IDEOLOGICAL DEBATES

By Josef Olmert

The ISRAEL-UA -US dramatic announcement was actually not a well-kept secret, as speculation swirled for a long while, that ”something” was cooking up. Frequent not-so-secret visits of Head of Mossad in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, flights of Emirates Airlines to Tel Aviv, Israeli sportspeople competing in the UAE with Hatikva played there, and the Israeli flag raised. So, we deal with a drama with elements of mini melodrama,  especially considering that the timing of all that is SO important to both President Trump and PM Netanyahu.

That said, it is important to make it abundantly clear that it IS an important event, and whether historic or not remains to be seen.  We should judge the importance of events not just or mainly on the spur of the moment. It is important because it seems to be part of a trend in Middle East politics. The downgrading of the centrality of the Palestinian problem as a factor in regional politics, the growing emphasis of many countries on dealing with their own domestic problems, hence their reprioritization of their interests and concerns, AND last, but surely not least, the Iranian challenge. It is NOT a peace treaty, rather a statement of intent to achieve it. It is an agreement about full normalization of the relations, and judging by past experience, the process leading to full peace can be long.  Remember how it was with Egypt. Sadat visited Israel in November 1977, Camp David in September 1978, the formal peace treaty in March 1979. A detailed discussion of all these factors is necessary and will appear in a forthcoming paper. However, this piece is devoted to the implications in Israel of all that. Both the regional and domestic Israeli angles were touched upon in my previous paper on the question of annexation, but now we dwell extensively on the effect of all that on Israeli politics.

Here is the problem. Who proves right in the on-going debate that has torn apart Israeli society since 1967, which is about how to achieve peace in the Middle East? A debate which is very central for the understanding of electoral patterns in Israel, very central indeed but not THE most important. To cut a long story short, here are the opposing doctrines in a nutshell. The Left Wing claims that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is THE conflict in the Middle East, and solving it is the only key to peace and friendship with all the other Arab states. Solving it means a Palestinian state in the entirety of the pre-1967 borders. This state would include East Jerusalem, including the Jewish holy sites, established as the capital of this state. In addition, Recognition by Israel of the injustice caused by what they call the Palestinian Nakbah [catasthrophe] and readiness by Israel to recognize the Palestinian Right of Return with a substantial number of Palestinian refugees allowed into Israel in pre-1967 borders.  The catchphrase is Land for Peace, and currently, the Left really is narrowed to Meretz and those who to its left. As such, this vision is the core belief of a small electoral minority, but one which is well represented in the media, the academic world, and the business community. The Oslo Accords of 1993, negotiated and signed by a Labor-Meretz government did NOT amount to a peace treaty, were far from finalizing the conflict and with the passage of time and the impact of what has transpired since then [which is out of the scope of this paper], have become grossly irrelevant. The opposing doctrine can be summed up like this: The conflict is Arab objection to accept a Jewish state, so it is not about borders, but about the very existence of Israel. The conflict with the Palestinians is an offspring of the bigger conflict, not its cause. Peace with the Palestinians is desirable but can be achieved, if at all, with conditions so different than the ones presented by the Left Wing. Yes, Prime Minister Netanyahu, still the nominal leader of the Right Wing, states on occasion his support for a two-state solution, but few, surely among his supporters, believe it. The catchphrase here is Peace for Peace. Here it is -two diametrically opposed doctrines, so a fact check is needed.

Israel has only two formal peace treaties with Arab countries-Egypt and Jordan. The first was based on the principle of Land for Peace. Israel gave away the Sinai desert in its entirety and got full peace in return, a cold peace but one which changed the entire strategic landscape in the Middle East in favor of Israel. With the largest, strongest Arab country, this peace meant that there could not be any more Arab-Israeli wars, rather local, limited-scale wars between Israel and one Arab country. Surely a major change. The peace did Not include the Palestinians, and Sadat and Begin, while paying lip service to the need to solve this problem, simply signed a separate peace deal. Balance sheet between Right and Left in Israel-a draw, Land for Peace -victory to the Left, no Palestinian-victory to the Right. Then came the peace with Jordan. No component of land, not conditional on the Palestinian issue. Victory to the Right, though signed by a Left Wing government. Now let us move back to the Palestinians. The Oslo Accords did NOT lead to the NEW MIDDLE EAST, envisaged so vocally by Shimon Peres, the real architect of the  Accords. Victory to the Right. On top of all that, the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, when Israel vacated lock, stock, and barrel, a territory claimed by the Palestinians. Not one Jew was allowed to stay. We all know what has happened since then, So, another clear victory to the Right, though an act taken by a government that represented those [sharon and supporters] who left Likud. Now we come to the recent breakthrough with the UAE, which was described above. There is no territorial component, so-Peace for Peace? This is now the battle cry of the Right Wing, another clear cut political and ideological victory. The overall factual context of this highly positive and blessed development does not substantiate the Right-Wing all-out victory claim. The UAE’s move was possible ONLY because Israel under Netanyahu renounced the talk about unilateral annexation of parts of the disputed lands of Judea and Samaria/the West Bank. All this question of possible annexation was dealt with in a previous piece by me. However, Israel accepted the connection between the Palestinian issue and another peace treaty with an Arab country, which was NOT the basis for the previous peace treaties. Still, a partial victory for the Right Wing, because this is a peace treaty in the making in return for a very light Israeli concession, perhaps not a concession at all, as the discussion of annexation was actually a bogey to start with. Did Netanyahu pull a genius, Machiavelli-like trick?. Did he raise annexation to force the UAE to accept full peace? Well, even the most ardent Netanyahu fans do not make this claim. However, there is emerging actual opposition to his latest move. The reason is very simple. They want annexation. They believed Netanyahu and put together these two elements that make them Right Wing Purists-those who unequivocally accept the basic ideological tenet that there can be Middle East peace without ANY regard to the Palestinians. Netanyahu himself continues to pay lip service to annexation, but it sounds completely hollow, and obviously, he denies any trick. Rather, he claims that when the UAE offered peace with Israel, he preferred this over annexation, though it is all temporary because annexation will come sometime in the future. The UAE deal does not fully support, therefore, the classic  Right Wing thesis. The Palestinians are still in the picture. Altogether though, the Right Wing, as we can see here, leads the debate in Israel by points. What makes their political ascendancy in Israel so obvious [unless the Netanyahu legal and political shenanigans will bring him down, though not necessarily the Right Wing as a whole], has to do with the sense that a real, viable arrangement with the Palestinians is impossible to achieve, but also with the deep animosity of large blocks of voters [Mizrachim in particular] to the Left Wing and the legacy of their dominance in Israeli politic.

The above discussion is NOT meant to be a prediction of the results of the next/coming Israeli elections, rather to indicate that politics in the Middle East have changed to the point where the Palestinian issue, while a real problem, has lost most of its urgency, in fact, its veto power over regional politics. If that is the case, then the mainstream Right Wing in Israel can claim a victory over the Left, which seems to be empty-handed conducting the debate with the Right. Maybe their political redemption may come by dwelling much more on domestic issues. There are signs that it is starting to happen.

Dr. Josef Olmert is a Senior Fellow at the Palm Beach Center for Democracy and Policy Research and an adjunct professor of Political Science at the University of South Carolina