The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain will officially reconcile with Israel during a ceremony in Washington on Tuesday thereby finalizing the US-brokered agreements that circumvented the Palestinian issue while allowing a rapprochement between the Jewish state and its neighbors after a 25-year hiatus
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 15th September, 2020) The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain will officially reconcile with Israel during a ceremony in Washington on Tuesday thereby finalizing the US-brokered agreements that circumvented the Palestinian issue while allowing a rapprochement between the Jewish state and its neighbors after a 25-year hiatus.
The agreement with UAE is expected to be defined as a peace treaty while the agreement with Bahrain as a declaration of peace. Full details of the documents will not be revealed until the White House event, which will host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and foreign ministers of both Gulf monarchies in the presence of US President Donald Trump.
The UAE and Bahrain will be the third and the forth Arab countries to fully normalize relations with Israel after Egypt did so in 1979 and Jordan in 1994. Israel had also concluded a relatively short-lived and now defunct peace with Mauritania as well as interim agreements with the Palestinians.
The accords will see the UAE and Bahrain exchange embassies and ambassadors with Israel and allow direct flights. The countries will launch initiatives to boost cooperation across a broad range of sectors, according to previous White House statements.
The Israel-UAE agreement, dubbed "The Abraham Accord," was announced in August and the one with Bahrain a month later. White House Senior Adviser Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and his pointman for Middle Eastern affairs, told reporters that the United States decided not to delay the Bahrain deal after being encouraged by the positive domestic and international reaction to the agreement with the UAE.
The UAE's and Bahrain's turnaround appears to be a major erosion of the common Arab position which, as manifested in the regional peace initiative of 2002, offered Israel a normalization only as a reward for its withdrawal from the occupied territories claimed by the Palestinians for a state of their own. The Palestinians denounced both agreements and lamented the absence of condemnation on the part of the Arab League.
The agreement with the UAE provides Israel with an opportunity to annex much of the Palestinian territories. Israel was expected as early as July to apply its sovereignty over a third of the occupied West Bank, but reneged on the move despite being endorsed in Trump's earlier peace plan for the Israelis and Palestinians.
Trump, who takes credit for brokering both agreements, hailed them as "historic breakthroughs" and has already been twice nominated for the Nobel peace prize.
Critics argue that the praise may be exaggerated since there are no significant issues between Israel and six Arab Gulf monarchies that have cooperated for years, brought together by mutually perceived threats of Iran's expansionism and the rise of Sunni radicals. US mediation under Trump has so far not resolved the Palestinian issue or "the Gulf rift" - the blockade of Qatar by its neighbors, according to critics.
