{"id":175107,"date":"2020-12-21T12:00:19","date_gmt":"2020-12-21T12:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=175107"},"modified":"2024-06-12T21:24:50","modified_gmt":"2024-06-12T20:24:50","slug":"how-gulf-states-became-business-partners-in-israels-occupation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/12\/how-gulf-states-became-business-partners-in-israels-occupation\/","title":{"rendered":"How Gulf States Became Business Partners in Israel\u2019s Occupation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Since signing the Abraham Accords, the UAE and Bahrain have been actively colluding with Israel\u2019s settler movement and military authorities.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

14 Dec 2020 – <\/em>The professed rationale for the recent Abraham Accords, so-called \u201cpeace deals\u201d signed with Israel by the UAE and Bahrain, was to stymie Israeli efforts to annex swaths of the West Bank.<\/p>\n

The aim was supposedly to neutralise another \u201cpeace\u201d plan \u2013 one issued early this year by US President Donald Trump\u2019s administration \u2013 that approved Israel\u2019s annexation<\/a> of large areas of the West Bank dominated by illegal Jewish settlements.<\/p>\n

The two Gulf states trumpeted the fact that, in signing the accords in September, they had effectively scotched that move, thereby salvaging hopes of a future Palestinian state.\u00a0Few observers entirely bought the official story \u2013 not least because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that annexation had only been put on temporary hold<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The real purpose of the Abraham Accords appeared less about saving Palestinians than allowing Gulf states to go public with, and expand, their existing ties to Israel. Regional intelligence could now be shared more easily, especially on Iran, and the Gulf would gain access<\/a> to Israeli hi-tech and US military technology and weapons systems.<\/p>\n

Separately, Sudan was induced to sign the accords after promises it would be\u00a0removed from Washington\u2019s list of \u201cterror-supporting\u201d states, opening the door<\/a> to debt relief and aid.\u00a0And last week, Morocco became the fourth Arab state<\/a>\u00a0to initiate formal relations with Israel after the Trump administration agreed to recognise its occupation of Western Sahara.<\/p>\n

Twisting more arms<\/h3>\n

Israel, in return, has been able to begin \u201cnormalising\u201d with an important bloc of Arab states \u2013 all without offering any meaningful concessions on the Palestinian issue.<\/p>\n

Qatar and Saudi Arabia are also reported to have been considering doing their own deals with Israel. Jared Kushner, Trump\u2019s Middle East adviser, visited the region<\/a>\u00a0this month\u00a0in what was widely assumed to be a bid to twist arms.<\/p>\n

Riyadh\u2019s hesitation, however, appears to have increased<\/a> after Trump lost last month\u2019s US presidential election to Joe Biden.<\/p>\n

Last week, during an online conference held in Bahrain and attended by Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi, a former senior Saudi government official, Turki al-Faisal al-Saud, launched a blistering verbal attack on Israel, saying it jailed Palestinians in \u201cconcentration camps\u201d and had built an \u201capartheid wall\u201d. It was unclear whether he was speaking<\/a> in more than a personal capacity.<\/p>\n

While the covert purpose of the Abraham Accords was difficult to obscure, the stated aim \u2013 of aiding Palestinians by preventing Israel\u2019s annexation of the West Bank \u2013 was still seen as a vital tool for the UAE and Bahrian to sell these agreements back home.<\/p>\n

But in practice, both have quickly jettisoned any pretence that Palestinians will benefit from these deals. Not only that, but already they barely bother to conceal the fact that they are actively and tangibly colluding with Israel to harm Palestinians \u2013 by bolstering Israel\u2019s illegal settlements and subsidising its military regime of occupation.<\/p>\n

Trade with settlements<\/h3>\n

Bahrain demonstrated this month\u00a0how indifferent it is to the negative impacts on Palestinians. On a visit to Israel, the country\u2019s trade minister, Zayed bin Rashid al-Zayani, said Bahrain was open to importing products from Israel wherever they were manufactured. \u201cWe have no issue with labelling or origin,\u201d he said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The comment suggested that Manama was ready to become a gateway for Israel to export settlement products to the rest of the Arab world, helping to bolster the settlements\u2019 legitimacy and economic viability. Bahrain\u2019s trade policy with Israel would then be even laxer than that of the European Union, Israel\u2019s top trade partner<\/a>. The EU\u2019s feeble guidelines<\/a> recommend the labelling of settlement products.<\/p>\n

After wide reporting of Zayani\u2019s comments, Bahrain\u2019s state news agency issued a statement<\/a>\u00a0shortly afterwards saying he had been \u201cmisinterpreted\u201d, and that there would be no import of settlement goods. But it is hard not to interpret the remarks as indicating that behind the scenes, Bahrain is only too willing to collude in Israel\u2019s refusal to distinguish between products from Israel and those made in the settlements.<\/p>\n

That this is the trading basis of the Abraham Accords is further highlighted by reports that the UAE is already welcoming business with Israel\u2019s illegal settlements.\u00a0An Israeli winery, using grapes grown on the Golan Heights, a large plateau of Syrian territory seized by Israel in 1967 and illegally annexed in 1981, has reportedly started exporting<\/a> to the UAE, which has liberalised its alcohol laws for non-citizens.<\/p>\n

This is a fruitful turn of events for Israel\u2019s 500,000 settlers in the occupied West Bank. They have lost no time touting for business, with the first delegation arriving in Dubai last month hoping to tap new markets<\/a> in the Arab world via the UAE.\u00a0Last week a settler delegation reportedly returned<\/a> to Dubai to sign an agreement with a UAE company to import settlement goods, including alcohol, honey, olive oil, and sesame paste.<\/p>\n

New low-point<\/h3>\n

This marks a new low-point in the shift by Arab states away from their original position that Israel was a colonial implant in the region, sponsored by the West, and that there could be no \u201cnormalisation\u201d \u2013 or normal relations \u2013 with it.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001. He is the author of: <\/em>Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish State (2006); <\/em>Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (2008); and <\/em>Disappearing Palestine: Israel\u2019s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). In 2011 he was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize<\/a> for Journalism.<\/em> The same year, Project Censored<\/a> voted one of Jonathan\u2019s reports, \u201cIsrael brings Gaza entry restrictions to West Bank\u201d, the ninth most important story censored in 2009-10.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 jonathan-cook.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

14 Dec 2020 – Since signing the Abraham Accords, the UAE and Bahrain have been actively colluding with Israel\u2019s settler movement and military authorities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":175316,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[2221,120,1829,1030,87,267,1029,487,2395,88,771,1027,427,85,109,287,1572,985,880,292,70,126,1025,886],"class_list":["post-175107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide","tag-checkpoints","tag-conflict","tag-coronavirus","tag-fatah","tag-gaza","tag-geopolitics","tag-hamas","tag-human-rights","tag-international-criminal-court-icc","tag-israel","tag-nakba","tag-oslo-accords","tag-palestine","tag-palestine-israel","tag-politics","tag-power","tag-settlers","tag-social-justice","tag-state-terrorism","tag-un","tag-usa","tag-violence","tag-west-bank","tag-zionism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175107"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":264217,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175107\/revisions\/264217"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}