It Should Never Happen Again Meanwhile in Palestine

Two months ago, Jared Kushner declared, as if tempting fate: "We are witnessing the last vestiges of what has been known as the Arab-Israeli conflict." The theory of the case for President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior counselor was that the problem of Palestine could be solved by putting unprecedented force per unit area on the Palestinians. It was never entirely clear how this would work in practice. The presumption was that the threat of isolation, irrelevance, and the prospect of getting nix rather than something would forcefulness the Palestinian Authority to take far less than it might otherwise politically. This was novel. Whatever else one might say about Presidents Barack Obama or George W. Bush-league and their approaches to the conflict, they occasionally saw a place for carrots and non just sticks.

Another Kushner belief proved more prescient — that Arab nations could be peeled off from the Palestinians 1 past one. In other words, the Arab-Israeli conflict could be made separate from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Nevertheless in a sense this is how information technology has been for decades. Washington had supported a separate peace between State of israel and central neighbors, succeeding with Egypt in 1978 and with Hashemite kingdom of jordan in 1994. Palestine was the reason in that location was an Arab-Israeli disharmonize in the starting time identify. To then ignore Palestine in making peace with Israel suggested an intriguing feat of inversion.

In his book "Preventing Palestine," the historian Seth Anziska offers a revisionist account of the Army camp David Accords, President Jimmy Carter's crowning foreign policy achievement. Originally, the vision was for a comprehensive settlement that would incorporate the Palestinians. In the talks, notwithstanding, President Anwar el-Sadat'south top priority, arguably his ain simply priority, was regaining Arab republic of egypt's lost territory in the Sinai. In making peace with Israel, he would too secure Egypt's place in the American orbit. But it came at a price — the downgrading of the Palestinian question. This may not have been the intention (at least non on Carter's part), but it was the upshot. In Anziska's telling, for the Palestinians at to the lowest degree, Army camp David was something of an original sin, with the benefit of retrospect.

For Arab nations, there was ever the pretense that their own peace with Israel would help the Palestinians. They may have even believed it. Perhaps diplomatic relations would allow them to influence Israel'southward beliefs. Information technology would give them leverage. Only in exercise, much of the leverage they might have had was lost. Israel had gotten what information technology wanted — information technology had neutralized the military threat from primal Arab challengers. What else did Egypt accept to give?

Today, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kingdom of morocco, and Sudan have been added to the list, via the "Abraham Accords." Saudi Arabia, at least up until the current hostilities, seemed like it might be next. It was unprecedented. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman secretly met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in November. Kushner was correct that this would isolate the Palestinians. Palestinian leaders in the West Bank made no cloak-and-dagger of their sense of betrayal.

Palestine had already receded from its (perceived) cardinal role in the Arab imagination. The Arab Leap fabricated clear that the primary battleground in the region wasn't betwixt Arabs and Israel just between regimes and their ain people — or, more than starkly, between regimes and Islamist movements. For autocrats, authorities survival took precedence over everything else. For opposition groups, democratization at home was the focus. Subsequently prospects for democracy dimmed, survival became the all-consuming concern for them, too. The chaos and fragmentation of the Arab Spring and its aftermath made it unlikely that Palestinians would receive much attention from their Arab neighbors.

And so it became possible to imagine a flurry of Arab leaders feeling that it was the correct time to move closer to State of israel, benefitting from economic and security cooperation in the process. For Gulf countries — peculiarly Kingdom of saudi arabia — any such move would exist sensitive. But with Palestine drifting lower on the regional agenda, the run a risk was tolerable. There might exist grumbling, but trivial more than. Even now, with the conflict in Gaza, the fallout volition likely be minimal, particularly in countries where the media — including social media — is ever more tightly controlled by the state. Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain are amid the virtually repressive countries in the region. At the aforementioned time, they have been successful in fashioning new forms of nationalism, specially amid younger citizens.

Saudi Arabia is an interesting example. The al-Saud family unit has ever relied on a item religious legitimacy. As the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, it has often presented itself as prioritizing Islamic causes over narrower ones. Under Mohammed bin Salman, however, a new "Saudi nationalism" has emerged. In foreign policy, this translates into "Saudi Arabia outset." With this in mind, the fact that the hashtag "Palestine is not my outcome" was trending in Saudi Arabia as the events in Gaza unfolded is not as surprising every bit it might seem. But it quickly provoked a counter-hashtag — "Palestine is our peak issue." Meanwhile, some prominent Saudi figures have struck a middle ground, perhaps sensing that this is the sweet spot for the Royal Court: harshly criticizing Israel, while also harshly criticizing Hamas. Co-ordinate to Andrew Leber, a Harvard doctoral candidate who studies Saudi social media, muted coverage in Saudi and Emirati-endemic media has slowly given way to coverage far more critical of Israel. "Once official statements signaled that the Saudi regime was weighing in firmly on the side of Palestinians, I started to meet considerably more pro-Palestinian statements on Saudi Twitter," he told me.

Palestine arouses passions. It always has, and information technology always will. Information technology is one of the concluding remaining issues that can rally broad and genuine support across Arab borders. This is why messaging must be carefully managed by regimes. Transnational solidarity — whether in the grade of pan-Arabism or Islamism — is a threat. Information technology can't easily be controlled. And then the goal is to limit and constrain it. For various regimes, then, the reemergence of fellow feeling toward the Palestinians is a problem. The timing isn't keen either. Just last year, Emirati and Saudi columnists similar Abdelrahman Al-Rashed were calling the Abraham Accords "a swell stride that serves the Palestinian people commencement, and the UAE and the Arabs second," although he had trouble sustaining this position for long.

This is all a bit messy. As the Emirati political scientist Abdulkhaleq Abdulla described it, the disharmonize in Gaza puts Israel'south new Arab partners in an "awkward position." Awkwardness, however, is manageable. But this assumes that the conflict in Gaza, a leadership crisis in the West Bank, and Arab-Jewish communal violence in Israel itself can exist contained. I unfortunately don't know if information technology can or if information technology will. And neither practise Arab leaders.

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Source: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/05/16/a-separate-peace-what-the-gaza-crisis-means-for-arab-regimes/

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