Add it all up and you understand why the four most recent Israeli elections ignored the existential threat posed to the Jewish state by the continued occupation of the West Bank. For most it was: out of sight, out of mind. And no wonder the US withdrew from active involvement in the area—until President Donald Trump gave his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a free hand to push through his own plan.
It’s a long story, but the short version is that both Netanyahu and the Palestinians rejected Kushner’s proposal for a two-state solution. But instead of letting the whole thing collapse, the leader of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, inspired by his ambassador to the US, Yousef al-Otaiba, proposed complete peace, trade and tourism with Israel if Israel agreed to it. agreed not to. unilaterally annex West Bank territory allocated to Israel in the Trump plan. And so the 2020 Abraham Accords were born, in which the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan established diplomatic relations with Israel.
The UAE has done something hugely important to catalyze this deal. The more the Middle East resembles the European Union, and the less it resembles the Syrian Civil War, is a good thing.
But the UAE and its Abraham Accord colleagues are largely reluctant to meddle in Israeli-Palestinian issues. They don’t think much of the Palestinian leadership, and they don’t want to get involved in the whole mess; they want to negotiate trade and investment deals with Israel’s high-tech economy to bolster itself. When they got Israel to agree not to annex the West Bank, they thought they had given the office – done.
Which brings me to the Saudis. For Israel, peace with Saudi Arabia is the big prize. It opens the door to peace with the entire Sunni Muslim world and access to an immense pool of investment capital.
But senior Saudi officials have told me their support will not come cheap. The ailing Saudi monarch, King Salman, has always had a deep emotional connection to the Palestinian cause. And his son and de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (aka MBS), knows that if Saudi Arabia cheaply forges a peace with Israel, Saudi Arabia’s nemesis, Iran, will use it to build a to launch propaganda jihad against Saudi Arabia across the Muslim world. It would be ugly.