Saudi Welcomes Abu Dhabi’s Betrayal: When Is Riyadh’s Turn?

By Al-Akhbar Newspaper – Translated by Staff

There is no need for much effort to deduce the Saudi position regarding the move of its Emirati ally to publicize its relations with ‘Israel’. What the officials do not say publicly is proclaimed by the court media and writers in day and night, to the extent that some of them refused to grant the Palestinians “generosity” without return. Instead, the recompense was “blackmailing” practiced - for 70 years - in the Gulf “in the name of the sanctity of the cause”, according to articles of semi-unified narratives. It is clear now that the temporary royal silence and Riyadh’s reluctance to welcome - unlike Manama and Muscat - is the result of the kingdom not being ready to announce a full normalization with ‘Israel’. Therefore, it is hiding behind its allies [now the Emirates and then Bahrain and later Oman], waiting for a "suitable" day in which its crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman, can proceed with the alliance, to consolidate the covenant of his ancestors and their promise.

The way the UAE has created "will form an Arab trend that exceeds all the failed obstacles that prevailed for seventy years." This will undoubtedly contribute to strengthening the Saudi-‘Israeli’ rapprochement. This is a trend that was reinforced in recent years, under the alliance of the "two Mohammads" [Bin Zayed and Bin Salman]. The two pillars of common hostility toward Iran and the attempts to attract foreign investment to finance the economic transformation plan, Bin Salman’s “2030 Vision", will unequivocally push the kingdom into an apparent rapprochement with ‘Israel’. Founding the $500 billion-city, "NEOM" - the backbone of this faltering "vision" - requires "peace and coordination with ‘Israel’, especially if the city will have the opportunity to become a tourist attraction," according to researcher Mohammad Yaghi at the German Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

The intersections are many, as well as the "interests" that unite the undeclared alliance, in addition to the American pressure that is evident through the Gulf-‘Israeli’ "reconciliation" mediator, Jared Kushner, to compel the kingdom to publicize its "inevitable" relations with ‘Israel’. Kushner said a few days ago “the course of a warship cannot be changed overnight.” He reminded Riyadh yesterday that the normalization of its relations with Tel Aviv would be in the interest of the kingdom's economy and defense. It would also contribute to limiting Iran's power in the region. As for ‘Israel’, the "peace agreement" between it and the Emirates represents "the most important cornerstone on the road to achieving the central goal of normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia," the expression belongs to an ‘Israeli’ political official who spoke to Yedioth Ahronoth.

In exchange for Riyadh’s official silence and Washington’s public calls, the Saudi media adhered, as usual, to a unified narrative based on marketing the idea that the kingdom views the normalization of relations between Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv as a sovereign Emirati affair, which would “yield good results for the Palestinian cause,” by “suspending the annexation process indefinitely,” despite all that has been said and spoken by ‘Israelis’ about baseless propaganda that the UAE marketed to justify its move. According to what has been written, the declaration "does not involve any interference in the Palestinian affair. It rather sets red lines for any policy that ‘Israel’ might pursue, which involves oppressing the rights of the Palestinian people, excluding the phantom of annexing the Palestinian lands, and the consolidating the two-state solution."

The justification of the Emirati moves in terms of "realism" as "constituting an important breakthrough in the peace process ... after it suffered from a long stalemate without any progress or success", had a significant share. In addition to that, the call to "overcome the deadly division based on returning to calling for the Arab Peace Initiative as a basis for negotiation”.

Riyadh considers, through its media, that "the policy of estrangement and boycott has not achieved neither the interest of the Palestinians nor the Arabs." Abu Dhabi chose "another communication and recognition-based approach to address the outstanding problems in a different climate," because "the just Palestinian cause has remained for more than seventy years without a political solution that satisfies the Palestinians who were insisting on big things, betting on the power of righteousness and forgetting the right to power." They depend entirely on “aid from the Arab countries, especially the rich Arab Gulf states, for their livelihoods, lives, jobs, authority, embassies, and all their life details.” They speak of "unprecedented emotional and ideological blackmail because of the Palestine issue," although they are "like all the causes of liberation that the occupied peoples suffered to obtain their liberation from the colonialists, the Palestinians are not better than the Vietnamese, the Algerians, or the rest of nations." They received peerless indulgence ... while all historical documents confirm that they were the ones who sold their lands, not alone, but in villages and sub-districts until they were transformed into Jewish settlements.” Therefore, “there is no real solution of the Palestinian issue except for Palestinians to accept their situation and build a new identity of their own choice... and assuming responsibility is the right way.”

The normalization of relations between the UAE and ‘Israel’ will encourage all the other Gulf states to follow their counterparts and reveal their secret ties with ‘Israel’ not to let Abu Dhabi enjoying alone the combination of its capital and advanced ‘Israeli’ technology in all fields, to become, along with Tel Aviv, the most powerful and wealthy in the Middle East. This is according to Thomas Friedman in "The New York Times", who in his article talks about another, a stronger and more psychological message addressed to Iran and its proxies, that “there are now two alliances in the region; The first is a UAE-led alliance of those who want the future to bury the past, and the second is an Iran-led alliance of those who wish that the past buries the future.”