John Raine
It has already reinforced divisions across the Middle East, but what will be the long-term significance of the recognition of Israel by the UAE and Bahrain? John Raine explains the competing agendas at play and the dividends on offer.
Despite the fanfare, the full significance of the formal recognition of the state of Israel by the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Bahrain will only be felt over time. Unlike the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and Jordan in 1994, and the subsequent warming of relations with some Gulf states, these accords are not part of a wider peace process to which they might lend impetus, and the other benefits they promise will depend on the vigour with which parties pursue the new opportunities and overcome in-built constraints.
In one respect, however, the immediate impact is discernible: it has reinforced divisions within the Arab world and Middle East into two discrete and rivalrous blocs, which were already apparent prior to the signing of the accords. The first is led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and includes Egypt and Bahrain, while the second, less coherent grouping contains Qatar, Syria, Turkey and Iran. They are divided over, principally, attitudes towards Iran and Islamist political groups, in particular the Muslim Brotherhood, both of which the first bitterly opposes and the second supports. The second bloc includes Bashar al-Assad’s Syria: although he hates the Brotherhood, deeply distrusts Turkey and courts Gulf engagement and support, he remains aligned and indebted to Iran. The bloc also includes large numbers of Arabs in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq, who are part of Iran’s regional network of partners and militias.
Emirati and Bahraini normalisation with Israel has introduced a new dynamic. It would be overstating its success to say that the UAE–Saudi-led bloc has recruited Israel to its cause, but these nations have deepened their strategic alignment with Israel and are now positioned to reap defence and security benefits from Israel as their partner. While Israel will continue to manage bilateral relationships with Russia and Turkey, it has made a clear, strategic choice about which partners, and which competing visions of the Middle East, it prefers.
This division in the Arab and Muslim Middle East recalls that which emerged after both Camp David in 1979 and the Oslo Accords in 1993, when Arab opinion was divided between ‘normalisers’ and ‘rejectionists’. The rejectionist bloc coalesced around Hafiz al-Assad’s Syria and included Iran and Hizbullah, as well as hardline Palestinian groups. But this time around, the Palestinians are united in their embrace of the rejectionists following the perceived betrayal of the Arab state order. Their anger was exemplified by their refusal in late September to take on the rotating presidency of the Arab League as scheduled.
Gulf states, which vacillated in 1992 but eventually eschewed full diplomatic relations with Israel, are now the leading normalisers. Ironically, whilst Israel is now drawn into the region’s politics, the Palestinians are further marginalised. As a political card for other Arab states, over which they once fought each other, the Palestinians’ value has now been drastically reduced.
Rejectionists and normalisers – wider agendas
Both blocs have wider agendas. The rejectionists are united only superficially in comparison with the normalisers, and are pragmatic in their relations with each other over issues such as Syria and Libya. But they share a strategic intent to contain Israel and Saudi Arabia, and to break the dominance of the United States as the most influential external actor in the region, which is most evident through their alignment with, and in Syria’s case debt to, Russia.
In the case of the normalisers, namely the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt, their strategic alignment with Israel had been developing steadily as a function of regional conflicts. The signing of the accords has, therefore, been all but a formalisation of an existing, loosely networked, security relationship. Israel and the Arab states share the same assessment of the threat posed to them by Iran and Islamic fundamentalism, which between them have defined defence and security strategy and driven regional cooperation in the past two decades.
The long-term agendas of Israel and the normalisers are not only convergent in specific theatres but in a broader vision of the value of interventionist leadership to promote and preserve regional stability. There is also consonance between the parties’ respective defence doctrines. This is certainly the case between the UAE and Israel: the UAE is committed to developing a modernised, digitally enabled hi-tech defence infrastructure, an area in which Israel has much to offer. They also share a critical infrastructure vulnerability in their dependence on desalination technology for their fresh-water supply, an area in which Israeli expertise will be welcome. As significant as the mutual, material benefits to security could be, the greater strategic benefit may be that normalisation acts as a gateway to enhanced US support (not just F-35 aircraft, but also drones, artificial intelligence and cyber).
Realising the dividends for the normalisers
But there will be constraints in each of the areas where further dividends from the accords have been promised. In security and defence policy, while methodology and threats may align, there will be limitations on the willingness of both sides to share sensitive techniques and information. Trust levels across and between respective security and defence establishments will be neither uniform nor high, as will the appetite for collaboration. The UAE, in particular, has a long journey to make from the disruption by the Dubai police of a Mossad assassination operation against a Hamas target in 2010. Both the Bahraini and UAE authorities will be watchful for Israeli operational aggression.
Conversely, if trust levels can be developed to support effective operational cooperation, their joint ability to contain and disrupt Iranian activities will be materially enhanced. That fact will not have been missed by Tehran and will incentivise it further to undermine the support among Gulf Arabs, not just Shia, for the partnership with Israel. Moreover, the prospect of Israeli services forward deployed to the UAE is a menace Iran is unlikely to ignore. There is clear scope for tension in the new partnerships between the Israelis who deploy aggressively against Iran in covert activities, and the UAE and Bahrain, which have pursued defensive strategies to avoid escalation.
The commercial and technological benefits may flow more readily. The UAE is well positioned as a financial centre to attract Israeli capital and, as a hi-tech economy with a developed surveillance culture, to absorb and develop tech partnerships with Israel in particular in the field of data exploitation. But there will be constraints not least from COVID-19 on the extent to which Israeli economic activity can be developed in areas such as tourism and aviation. And there is the question of just ‘how much Israel’ Emiratis, but especially Bahrainis, can comfortably absorb. Some segments of both societies will benefit and engage wholeheartedly; others will prefer to stay away. In any case, both governments will also have an eye on how widely and fairly they are rewarded, by Israel but also by the US, for the risk they have taken.
The regional, political dividend will be hardest of all to realise. The accords are not intended to stimulate and support a peace process other than through the minimal undertakings of the Israelis on the specific issue of settlements. They may also, in hardening the divisions within the Arab world, reinforce other animosities, not least between Qatar and the rest of the GCC.
The blocs the accords are reinforcing are not the building blocks of a recognisable peace process. But whether or not they escalate tensions in the region depends on two things: whether any remaining Arab states, and Saudi Arabia in particular, follow suit; and the operational response of the rejectionists. So far, Saudi Arabia can be assumed to be supportive of the accords but unwilling to sign. A major, constitutional stumbling block for any Saudi king will be the status of Jerusalem, a holy place, upon which King Salman has already shown himself unwilling to compromise and on which he unusually overrode his son Mohammed bin Salman’s view.
Even as they stick by the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative – which offers full normalisation with Israel for a full settlement with Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian Authority – the Saudis may tolerate, or even encourage, a widening of the list of signatories of the accords. This policy would find favour with any US administration, and allow Riyadh to capitalise on many of the benefits indirectly or directly without playing what is, for the Kingdom, the uniquely high-value card of normalisation. It would resonate throughout the Islamic, not just the Arab, world.
A test of tolerances, and a chance for Iran?
As for the rejectionists, their reaction so far has been limited to diplomatic moves, in the case of Palestine, and rhetoric, in the case of Iran. But tolerances among rejectionist parties, as well as individual Arabs, for further betrayal, in their eyes, will be tested if more Arab states sign. It is not only, for them, that normalisation represents a weakening of the Arab negotiating position, but also, and perhaps more profoundly, that it relegates further the cause of Palestine as an Arab priority.
Without some identifiable advantage accruing to the Palestinians and reassurance that they are integral to Arab visions of the Middle East, the continued normalisation of Israel’s relationship with the Arab world is likely to stoke frustration and play into the narrative of the sprawling and volatile rejectionist bloc, from Erdogan to Khamenei and Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood.
This may have adverse implications for regional security: both the Palestinians and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds Force retain a capacity and appetite to operate asymmetrically and beyond their borders. For Iran’s Quds Force in particular, still smarting from the killing of Qasem Soleimani in January 2020 – and with Jerusalem its original, much-vaunted cause – the opportunity and threat of Mossad on their doorstep, is clear. While Iran scored an offensive gain in opening a new front against Israel through its presence in Syria, Israel is now reciprocating in the Gulf, which will force Tehran to consider a defensive move.
Against that, the rejectionists will have to weigh the risks of expending capital and cost in attempting to turning back a tide driven, not least, by a demographic in the Middle East for whom Arab unity and the original cause of Palestine have been overtaken by new agendas and visions. Their posture is likely to be determined less by what serves the interests of Palestinians than by the enhanced threat they perceive from the alignment of Israel with their rival power bloc.
No comments:
Post a Comment