How Arab Ties With Israel Became the
Middle East’s New Normal
Though Israel remains opposed to Palestinian
independence, 2020 marked the year of its
acceptance in the region.
The decision by four Arab countries to forge
ties with Israel in 2020 was not about peace,
love, or understanding. The United Arab
Emirates, Sudan, Morocco, and (to a lesser
extent) Bahrain were all motivated by narrow
interests—including the promise of either
advanced weapons or diplomatic favors from
the United States.
And yet, the normalization deals stand as the
most significant breakthrough in the Arab-
Israeli conflict since the 1990s. Already,
Israel’s interactions with the UAE appear to
be warmer than its ties with Egypt and Jordan,
Arab countries that forged peace with Israel
decades ago. Thousands of Israeli
tourists have visited Abu Dhabi since direct
flights were inaugurated in late August. And
earlier this month, an Emirati royal bought a
large stake in an Israeli soccer team (which,
perversely, is known for its racist shunning of
Arab and Muslim players)—in the kind of
high-profile investment that until recently
seemed unimaginable.
For Palestinians, of course, the deals amount
to more tragedy and betrayal. In peace talks
over the years, Arab normalization was held
out as a prize Israel would get only once it
allowed independence for Palestinians in the
West Bank and Gaza Strip. Instead, Israel has
gained acceptance in the region without
making significant concessions in return.
(While it backtracked on imposing
sovereignty over parts of the West Bank,
many analysts believe Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu was never serious about
annexation.) In the political scorecard of the
Middle East, Palestinians were once again the
big losers.
It’s Not a Peace Deal. It’s
a Powder Keg
Not all diplomatic deals are preludes to peace—and
the Israel-UAE agreement fits an inauspicious
pattern.
BY KENNETH M. POLLACK
In August 1907, Russia and the United
Kingdom signed the Anglo-Russian
Convention, which settled their geostrategic
differences and brought them into a rough
alliance after nearly a century as bitter and
bloody adversaries.
There was one problem: the Anglo-Russian
Convention wasn’t the product of more
peaceful attitudes in London or St. Petersburg,
but of a dramatic shift in the balance of power
and the rise of a new threat.
The lesson of the Anglo-Russian Convention
is that a diplomatic event that brings a close to
one longstanding geostrategic rivalry may not
be the great boon it appears. Instead, it might
be a harbinger of worse to come. And there is
reason to be concerned that this is precisely
how we might eventually look back on this
week’s announcement that the UAE will
normalize relations with Israel, in return for
Jerusalem’s agreement not to annex any of the
West Bank.
Was this a positive development? From one
vantage point, sure. It represents one more
Arab government giving up on nearly a
century of conflict with Israel. There are
rumblings that other Arab states may soon (or
eventually) follow. That seems entirely
plausible, given the covert warming of ties
between Israel and various Gulf and Maghreb
countries over the past two decades, although
it’s hardly inevitable. If it were to happen, it
would put to rest one of the most vexing,
chronic conflicts of the 20th century.
But this is the 21st century. The Arab-Israeli
conflict has not been a defining factor in the
geopolitics of the Middle East for decades.
There has not been a conventional war
between Israel and an Arab state since 1982.
The 2006 Second Lebanon War between
Israel and Hezbollah, the closest we’ve come,
was notable because of how many of the Arab
states condemned Hezbollah. Indeed, for at
least 30 years, the threat to Israeli security has
come overwhelmingly from the Iranian-led
“Axis of Resistance,” not from the Arab
states.
Of course, like Europe in the early
20th century, the Middle East has seen its
geostrategic problems multiply in the early
21st century rather than abate, despite the
fading of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Just as
Europe then still suffered from the epochal
aftereffects of the industrial revolution, so the
Middle East is being turned inside out by the
impact of the equally profound information
revolution.
The result has been massive economic,
cultural, and demographic shifts that
inevitably create political turmoil. Iran’s
Green Revolution of 2009; the Arab Spring of
2011; the civil wars in Syria, Yemen, Libya,
Sinai, Turkish Kurdistan, and—to some extent
—Iraq—are all part of this upheaval.
The unrest itself has created new opportunities
for Iran, which has used the chaos and civil
war to help its allies across the region. Today,
Hezbollah rules Lebanon. Iran has greater
sway in Syria and Yemen than ever before. It
wields considerable influence in Iraq, albeit
less so at this moment than six months ago for
reasons that might pass all too soon.
Yet of far greater geostrategic importance to
the Middle East has been the disengagement
of the United States. Both the Obama and
Trump Administrations have simultaneously
denied this and bragged about it, but the
reality on the ground is far more
straightforward. Both Obama and Trump
steadily distanced themselves from the
problems of the region, despite the constant
warnings of their diplomatic and military
advisors along the way.
And just as the rise of a belligerent Germany
overturned all the dynamics of Europe, so the
disengagement of the United States has done
the same in the Middle East. Because the
United States was the most powerful force in
favor of the status quo, so our withdrawal has
emboldened those actors seeking to overturn
the regional order. Iran and its allies are the
most obvious and successful of these
beneficiaries, but so too are various radical
Sunni Islamist groups. Predictably, America’s
detachment has terrified our allies, and that
fear has pushed them to take actions they
never otherwise would have—some good,
some dangerous, some both at the same time,
like Israel-UAE normalization.
For all its economic and military strength,
Israel remains a small, beleaguered country, at
least psychologically. Of course, Iran is trying
to do everything it can to turn that perception
of menace into a strategic reality: bolstering
Hezbollah and Hamas; building a vast military
infrastructure in Syria; reaching out to radical
Palestinian groups in the West Bank and
Jordan; mounting cyberattacks against Israeli
infrastructure, and so on. Because of its small
size, extreme casualty It is no accident that
both the UAE and Saudi Arabia have begun
nuclear programs in the past dozen years.
These are both ostensibly for power
generation and to save their oil supplies for
export, not for producing weapons. Of course,
so too was/is Iran’s nuclear program, Tehran
claimed, and Saddam’s, and North Korea’s,
and the list goes on. In private, Gulf leaders
will say that they fear that Iran will acquire
nuclear weapons and without the United
States to protect them, they feel they may
have no choice but be able to match Iran to
deter it.
It gets worse when you recognize that none of
these countries—not even Israel—has the
same military or intelligence capabilities as
the United States. We are usually better able
to gauge the level of threat in the Middle East
than our regional allies, the Iraq WMD fiasco
notwithstanding. Other countries, starting with
Iran, won’t pick fights with the United States
the way that they will with one another. Iran is
wary of Israel, but it may be less so in future
as its own capabilities and those of its allies
expand. Meanwhile, it has never shown any
fear of the Arab states.
Thus, just as the 1907 Anglo-Russian
convention closed out one of the great
conflicts of the 19th century only to help
enflame the great conflict of the 20th century,
so the Israel-UAE agreement must be seen as
part of the ending of a 20th-century conflict,
but also as potentially the beginning of a new
21st-century conflict that may dominate the
Middle East. In that Middle East, without an
American hegemon to keep a lid on
aggression, status quo powers as diverse in
other ways as Israel and the UAE have no
choice but to find common cause. To band
together as best they can to fight their
common enemy, as the British and Russians
did in 1907. All of this is a recipe for greater
tensions, fear, conflict, and potentially
outright war.
We may be putting to bed one great regional
conflict, only to watch another arise. And that
should temper our enthusiasm for the latest
turn of events, no matter how positive it may
seem in the short term.
sensitivity, and historic ghosts, Israel’s
inclination—and its strategic doctrine—is to
strike hard and fast at potential threats before
they can become existential.
That is what it has been doing for years in
Syria, waging a war of attrition with Iran and
its allies to try to prevent Tehran from
building a military base there to open a new
front against Israel.
The UAE has pursued a similar approach to
its security concerns over the past two
decades, albeit without quite the capabilities
or psychological scars of the Israelis.
Along with Saudi Arabia, the UAE
intervened with conventional land and air
forces in Yemen, employed its air force and
covert support in Libya and Syria, and led the
blockade of Qatar by the other Gulf states.
Yemen is a particularly important case to
understand. There, the UAE and Saudi Arabia
decided to intervene in 2015 to prevent a
military victory by what they saw as an
Iranian-allied Shi’a militia, the Houthis.
However, they did so only after repeatedly
asking the United States to do more to prevent
the expansion of Iranian power in Yemen,
Syria, and Iraq to no avail. Their leaders
explicitly said that since the United States was
not going to act to limit the Iranian threat,
they felt they had no choice but to do so
themselves. Thus, the fear of growing Iranian
power in the face of a retreating America
pushed the Emiratis and Saudis to embark on
a risky and bellicose course of action.