Saturday 20th of April 2024

trump succeeds where all others, including biden, have failed...

until...until...

President Trump's chief adviser, Jared Kushner, has said the US-brokered Israel-UAE peace treaty represents a "massive change" for the Middle East.

Speaking to CBS News, Mr Kushner said the deal, unexpectedly announced on Thursday, would make the region safer.

It marks only the third Israeli-Arab peace treaty in the Middle East, and the first involving a Gulf state.

The international community has welcomed the deal, but Palestinians, Iran and Turkey have denounced it.

Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are expected the sign the deal in three weeks' time, normalising relations between the two countries, including opening embassies in each other's territory.

Israel and Arab states in the Middle East and North Africa have historically been in a state of conflict since Israel's creation in 1948, but this has receded in recent years after peace treaties with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994, and what is seen by both sides as a growing threat in the region from Iran.

Mr Kushner told CBS he and President Trump had been working on a deal between Israel and the UAE since Mr Trump came to office.

He said the treaty was a "dramatic breakthrough that will make the Middle East safer... [meaning] less American troops will have to be over there", without spelling it out in detail.

The agreement was, he said, "a very big victory" for President Trump that would make "the whole region more hopeful".

The announcement came eight months after the US president unveiled a blueprint for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, negotiated by Mr Kushner. However, while Israel welcomed the initiative the Palestinians rejected it as heavily biased towards Israel and froze ties with the Trump administration.

 

Read more:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53781360

noble abandon...

The “historic” agreement for normalization of ties between the United Arab Emirates and Israel is being presented as a noble effort by the Gulf Arab states to fend off further annexation of Palestinian land.

That facade was quickly eroded when Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu said his annexation plans were only “on hold” and not derailed, as the UAE had claimed in announcing the purported accord mediated this week by the Trump administration. 

The terse Palestinian reaction to the supposed deal got it right. It was “a stab in the back.” Iran and Turkey also denounced it as a sell-out of Palestinian rights by the UAE. 

So the claim by the Emiratis that the normalization of ties was motivated by a principled upholding of Palestinian territorial rights in the face of another Israeli land grab in the West Bank does not pass muster.

The Arab rulers have long been accused of neglecting the Palestinian cause and being all too willing to align with Washington and Israel based on a shared enmity towards Iran. The Sunni autocratic oil fiefdoms of the Persian Gulf are paranoid about their shaky regimes being toppled from alleged subversive Iranian influence in the region. This shared hostility towards Tehran has long surpassed “brotherly Arab solidarity” with Palestinians

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/498034-palestinians-uae-israel-iran/