Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid shakes hands with United Arab Emirates’ Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan in Abu Dhabi, UAE June 29, 2021. WAM/Handout via REUTERS.
HOWARD EPSTEIN – ISRAEL LETTER: What the Abraham Accords Can Deliver
In order to set the scene for this week’s important topic, I shall be presumptuous enough to quote from my book on Chaim Weizmann, Israel at Seventy-five: In Weizmann’s Image, thus:-
“Of Lawrence of Arabia, Weizmann wrote:-
“I had met Lawrence fleetingly in Egypt, with Allenby, and later in Palestine. I was to meet him quite often later, and he was an occasional visitor to our house in London. His relationship to the Zionist movement was a very positive one, in spite of the fact that he was strongly pro-Arab, and he has mistakenly been represented as anti-Zionist. It was his view — as it was Feisal’s — that the Jews would be of great help to the Arabs, and that the Arab world stood to gain much from a Jewish Homeland in Palestine”. [Emphasis added.]
Corroboration of this view is provided by Martin Gilbert (the late and greatly-missed official biographer of Winston Churchill) thus:-
“Lawrence, like Churchill, saw virtue in the Zionist enterprise. His friendship with the Arab leaders with whom he had fought during the Arab Revolt was paralleled by his understanding of Zionist aspirations, and his keenness to see the Zionists help the Arabs forward in Palestine – and elsewhere in the Middle East – to modernity and prosperity. [Emphasis added.]
On the first anniversary of the Balfour Declaration in November 1918, Lawrence told a British Jewish newspaper: ‘Speaking entirely as a non-Jew, I look on the Jews as the natural importers of western leaven so necessary for countries of the Near East.’”
Those familiar with the seminal Abraham Accords, and the resultant progress in diplomacy and trade (half a billion dollars in 2021), will appreciate that the views of Lawrence and Churchill have been wholly adopted by the more progressive Arab/Moslem entities, namely the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Morocco and Sudan.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian leadership remains trapped in its time-warped victimhood and insatiable craving for charity – almost completely dried up now. Expecting from them a constructive policy eg: trying to kill Israelis with kindness, instead of the knives, guns and vehicles they now deploy weekly, appears unrealistic. Yet that, and a huge helping of Lawrence/Churchill constructiveness, is exactly what the Palestinian people need for their escape from their Fatah/Hamas prisons. They could take their lead not only from the Gulf Arabs but also from their Israeli Arab cousins.
The Bennet/Lapid coalition government brought about several improvements in Israeli political life, one of the most striking and radical being the inclusion of Ra’am, the United Arab List party. Last April, Ra’am’s leader, Mansour Abbas (not to be confused with Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah leader, now some 17 years into his four year term) was appointed chair of the Knesset’s Special Committee on Arab Society Affairs.
Last week, Mansour Abbas, made a startling declaration: “Israel was born as a Jewish state and will remain so”. This provoked outrage from members of the other Arab parties, for they have fought tooth and nail against such pragmatism, especially in Europe and the USA, which are most receptive to their fantasies and self-denial of reality. (Sensibly, Mansour now has a permanent security detail.)
Mansour is, however, no dreamer but highly practical. Last October he said: “There is a new agenda for Israel and Arab society. We are taking the responsibility and initiative [to] implement Ra’am’s vision.” A few days later, the 2021 Israeli budget passed with NIS32 billion ($10 billion) allocated to the Israeli Arab communities. Mansour may take considerable credit for that and, plainly, there is an agreeable community of interest between the Israeli government and Ra’am representation in the Knesset.
What could go wrong? The answer comes from that giant of international diplomacy, the US state department – doubtlessly struggling to cope with the careless senescence of President Biden – for US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has repeatedly said that the Biden administration intends to press ahead with its plan to reopen the US Jerusalem consulate (a base for diplomatic outreach to the Palestinians, before it was closed by Trump in 2018) despite Israeli opposition to such a move. The good news is that no date has yet been set.
In the meantime, in a rare example of US realpolitik, the new US ambassador in Jerusalem, Thomas Nides, has held several meetings with businessmen, philanthropists and other figures within the Israeli Arab community. He has noticed the shift in Arab Israeli society, and hopes that Arab participation in the Israeli coalition government will open a new chapter for ties between Israel’s Arab and Jewish citizens.
The Abraham Accords may yet find their expression, not just between Israel and external Arab entities, but also within Israel, for the good of all those – Jews and Arabs – who live within the Green Line. That would present the Arab leadership beyond it, in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, with a real dilemma: keep on with the terrorism or engage around the table.
The welfare of the Palestinian people depends on it.
© December 2021 – Howard Epstein
