Palestinian officials no longer have the power to “veto” the expansion of Arab-Israeli relations, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said while applauding new diplomatic accords between American allies in the Middle East.
“For decades, this town, foreign policy with respect to the Middle East, gave the Palestinians a veto right that they could act in a way that prevented any Arab nation from engaging with the most important democracy in the Middle East,” Pompeo told the Atlantic Council on Tuesday. “We took a different view.”
Pompeo and U.S. officials credit their focus on the threats emanating from Iran as the organizing principle of the normalization of ties between Israel and two Gulf Arab nations — Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Delegations from the three countries convened at the White House on Tuesday to sign the Abraham Accords, in addition to separate agreements between Israel and each country.
“This peace will eventually expand to include other Arab states and ultimately help bring an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict once and for all,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday at the White House. “Let us feel on this day the pulse of history. For long after the pandemic is gone, the peace we make today will endure.”
The agreements represent a substantial diplomatic shift for the Arab states, which historically have refused to establish formal ties with Israel due to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Palestinian officials have decried the deals as “a betrayal” of their cause, alleviating pressure on Israel to agree to the formation of a Palestinian state, although UAE officials maintain that they are not abandoning that effort.
“For the Emiratis, this is still the beginning of a process of negotiations with the Israelis and Americans, and I would expect they will continue to seek — and receive — more for their gestures toward Israel,” the Center for Strategic and International Studies senior vice president Jon Alterman wrote Tuesday. ”A senior Emirati official recently told me that if Israel wants peace, the only way that they can get it is through an agreement with the Palestinians, which normalization of relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain quite clearly is not. What it is, instead, is a collapse of Arab solidarity on the Palestine question that had been in place for three-quarters of a century.”
Pompeo suggested that the collapse has spread even beyond Bahrain and the UAE. “It shouldn’t go without notice — not only have these nations chosen to recognize Israel, but when the Gulf states all got together and the Palestinians demanded that there be a statement denouncing what took place, that did not occur,” he said. “And so, yes, there is a big shift in how these alliance are set.”
