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22 August 2020

The UAE Deal May Be a Bittersweet Win for Israel’s Netanyahu

Frida Ghitis

The landmark agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates that was announced unexpectedly last week, a prelude to normalized diplomatic relations, is by any measure a triumph for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But in the tumultuous, fractious landscape of Israeli politics, Netanyahu’s celebrations have been tempered by bitter recriminations at home, a reminder that in Israel, no win comes without wounds.

In the deal, first made public by U.S. President Donald Trump, the United Arab Emirates agreed to establish full diplomatic ties with Israel in exchange for Israel’s suspension of plans to annex parts of the West Bank. The UAE’s move goes a long way in dismantling the fiction of a united Arab front against Israel, one that started crumbling years ago, despite vows by Arab leaders not to make peace with Israel until the establishment of a Palestinian state. But the two-state solution has made no headway, while Arab countries, which have grown accustomed to the once-unacceptable existence of a Jewish state and Israel’s decades-long occupation of territories it captured during wars with its neighbors, have developed ever more elaborate, if secret, ties with Israel.

Now, the UAE-Israel relationship is out in the open. It’s a historic moment, and a huge stride in Israel’s longstanding aim to become a “normal” country in the Middle East, even as the conflict with Palestinians remains unresolved. It’s hard to view this as anything but a win for Israel—hard, but as it turns out, not impossible.


Not everyone is exultant in Israel, where the reactions followed the contours of its political divisions. In progressive Tel Aviv, the municipality lit up its building in the colors of the Emirati flag. In Jerusalem, right-wing politicians and settler leaders berated Netanyahu, calling the agreement a betrayal of the prime minister’s promise to formally bring the biblical lands of Judea and Samaria into Israel, a prospect decried by much of the international community as illegal annexation.

The stakes became starkly clear when Netanyahu’s main rival for leadership of Israel’s right wing, former ally Naftali Bennett, blasted the prime minister. “Netanyahu,” he said, “missed a one-in-a-century opportunity.” Bezalel Smotrich, a settler and legislator with Bennett’s Yamina bloc, an alliance of nationalist and ultranationalist parties, furiously declared that “Netanyahu has deceived right-wing voters for years with great success.” It’s time, he said, to “present an alternative leadership.”

But if settlers, a minority of the Israeli population, and their backers were unhappy about the fading chances for annexation, the vast majority of Israelis were rejoicing at the news of normalization with another Arab country. A survey taken three days after the announcement found that nearly 80 percent of Israelis prefer normalization with the UAE over annexation of the West Bank.

That’s an overwhelmingly positive verdict on Netanyahu’s deal. But it’s still not enough to solve his problems. Netanyahu scrambled to appease the right, motivated by news that the polls showed a sudden surge by Yamina.

In detailing the deal with the UAE, Netanyahu faced the conflicting demands of touting the achievement, showing himself as a man of peace, and assuaging the anxieties of the right, without whose support his career is finished. Netanyahu appeared on Sky News Arabia for the first time. His words dubbed into Arabic, he declared, “The people in the region are fed up with wars and conflicts.”

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