Trump Announces Peace Deal Between Israel, United Arab Emirates
President Trump on Thursday announced a historic peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates that would pave the way for full normalization of relations between the two Middle Eastern countries.
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Israel and UAE peace deal is vindication for Trump: Goodwin
Now we’re talking the Art of the Deal!
While it is not unusual in political circles to describe something as a historic breakthrough, it is unusual when the term is justified. Yet that is the right way to describe the three-way agreement announced Thursday by the Trump White House, Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
Based on its immediate impact alone, you can even call this one an earthquake. In an instant, regional fault lines are redrawn and the door is thrown open for Israel to normalize its relations with other Arab states.
The agreement also dramatically turns up the heat on the Palestinians to make a deal, lest they find themselves further isolated in their standoff with Israel.
“It means they either have to finally come to the negotiating table, or keep going where they’ve been going,” Jared Kushner, the top American official involved in crafting the terms, told me.
Indeed, there is a sweetener in the deal aimed at the Palestinians. Israel’s agreement to suspend its plan to assert sovereignty over much of the West Bank is a huge concession that buys time for the Palestinians, but not endlessly. Kushner defined the suspension as covering the “foreseeable future.”
He said UAE leaders were concerned that the Israeli move would be a “big setback in relationships” and thus pushed for the suspension.
Meanwhile, establishing formal diplomatic relations and starting direct airline flights means Muslims from the UAE will be able to fly to Israel and visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. That opening shreds the claim from Islamists that Israel prevents them from worshipping at the mosques, among Islam’s holiest sites.
The enormous trade-offs vindicate President Trump’s policy of strengthening America’s alliance with Israel and countering Muslim extremists. The usual critics, including Democrats, most European governments and United Nations bureaucrats, predicted that Trump’s decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognize Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights would lead to greater Arab unity and possibly war.
In effect, the critics were endorsing the very policy the Obama-Biden administration pursued, which yielded only negative results. The former team gave Israel, Saudi Arabia and other traditional allies the back of the hand while wooing the Palestinians and Iran. In exchange, it got nothing except Palestinian intransigence and an emboldened and aggressive Iran.
By going in the opposite direction, Trump, Kushner and Ambassador David Friedman are using strengthened American-Israeli ties as a rallying point for Arab states who fear Iran more than Israel.