by YARA HAWARI
From arms deals to surveillance tech exchanges, Yara Hawari explains how alliances are fostered between Israel and Arab governments.
Since the Israeli regime unleashed an unprecedented attack on the people of Gaza, amounting to what many experts have identified as ‘genocide’, millions from London to Jakarta have taken to the streets in solidarity with the people of Palestine.
Much of the Arab world has reacted with outrage too, with demonstrations taking place in Jordan, Bahrain, Tunisia, Yemen, Lebanon and even a small protest in Dubai where such actions are effectively banned. A recent survey of Arabs across 16 countries reveals that 88 per cent stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and 84 per cent have expressed great psychological stress as a result of the war.
This outpouring of support is hardly surprising; Arabs have long felt a deep affiliation with the Palestinian struggle for liberation.
Reflecting on generations of Palestinian resistance, and its influence on the 2011 revolution in his own country, Egyptian political prisoner Alaa Abd el-Fattah wrote in 2021: ‘My generation was raised on scenes from the Second Intifada [2000-05] and launched itself onto the scene with student demonstrations in support of Palestine.* One movement followed another until this generation led a revolution. Yes, the roots of the revolution lie in the solidarity demonstrations with the Second Intifada, for we are Arabs and Palestine is always on our mind.’
Despite this strength of feeling, there has been a stark disconnect between the popular Arab support for Palestinian liberation and the action or inaction of Arab regimes. It has not gone unnoticed by Palestinians who have long expressed their rage at what is called khiyanah – betrayal or treachery in Arabic – of their struggle.
Blurred lines
In the decade after the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and the creation of Israel, Arab leaders engaged in secret negotiations with the Israeli regime. Most prominent among them was Morocco, which clandestinely fostered relations with the security services, Mossad, under King Hassan II in the 1960s.
Such co-operation peaked at the 1965 Arab League Summit in Casablanca, where Mossad was reportedly involved in helping the Moroccan secret services bug the hotel rooms and conference halls of Arab leaders in attendance.
King Hassan II would later host secret meetings between Mossad and Egyptian officials, which eventually led to the first official normalization deal between an Arab state – Egypt – and the Israelis, establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries. Egypt signed a treaty with Israel in 1979 and in return Israel withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula, which it had occupied since 1967.
Later, in 1993, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Israeli regime signed the Oslo Accords. Under the agreements, the Israelis accepted the PLO as the representative of the Palestinians and in return the PLO recognized Israel’s right to exist. This opened the door for further regional normalization. As writer and political analyst Omar H Rahman has written, ‘the red line prohibiting a liaison with Israel among the Arab states was blurred. After Oslo, ties developed, informally and clandestinely, largely kept under wraps because of the persistent taboo among Arab publics toward normalizing relations with Israel while the Palestinian people remain under Israeli occupation.’ On a street level, this normalization – or ‘tatbee’ in Arabic – was deeply resented.
It wasn’t long before Jordan did the same in the 1994 Wadi Araba Treaty. The agreement officially ended the state of war between the two nations, establishing full diplomatic relations and the position of border crossings between them. In return, Jordan received substantial military and economic aid from the West and cemented its position as a key US ally in the region.
Then, in 1996, Qatar became the first Gulf state to de facto recognize the Israeli regime by establishing trade relations. At the 1997 Middle East and North Africa Economic Summit in Doha, the Qataris hosted the Israeli trade minister – a move that outraged the Saudi Arabian regime at the time. The relationship subsequently deteriorated, however, following the many Israeli assaults on Gaza.
While it would take other states in the Gulf longer to formally normalize relations with the Israelis, covert relations and co-operation around security and intelligence were common following the Oslo Accords. And over the past decade, anti-Iranian sentiment and the rise of a new generation of unelected leaders, committed to advancing ties with the West and breaking from the legacy of Arab nationalism, has brought many Gulf states into closer alignment with the Israeli regime.
So too has the prospect of shared surveillance technologies. A recent investigation into Israel’s Pegasus spyware program by the New York Times revealed that in 2013 Israeli officials made the technology available to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as a ‘truce offering’ intended to compensate for an incident three years prior in which Mossad agents assassinated a Hamas official in Dubai without informing the Emirati government of the operation. The spyware came at the right moment, while the UAE was actively suppressing political opposition in its attempt to curb a domestic uprising.
Shifting positions
The inauguration of Donald Trump as US president in 2017 ushered in a new era of Arab-Israeli relations. In September 2020, the UAE and Bahrain became the third and fourth Arab states to formally establish diplomatic relations with Israel via the US-sponsored Abraham Accords. The agreements were hailed as historic peace treaties by much of the Western mainstream media, despite the fact that the two countries had never been at war with Israel. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called the Accords a ‘big step forward…’ in securing peace in the Middle East.
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