A historic day for peace!
Dear friends,
As you probably have heard, last week the United States helped broker an agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which will eventually lead to a full peace treaty. I wanted to make sure you heard from me about this historic development.
Before we get into the analysis, let's just say upfront: this is a big deal! Israel made peace with Egypt in 1979, then Jordan in 1994, and now — 26 years later — in 2020 the United Arab Emirates joins this list. We are witnessing history. While the process is just beginning and we may be a long way from a signed peace treaty, it's hard not to get excited about the prospect of fully normalized diplomatic and trade relations between Israel and the UAE. Will Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries follow the same path in the coming months? Can we finally put an official end to the ridiculous Arab League boycott that some companies in the Arab world still enforce? How long until we can fly Emirates to Israel? These are all speculative questions for now, but the prospects are a lot more promising than they were last month.
As was the case in 1979 and 1994, Israel once again demonstrated its willingness to make sacrifices and pay a heavy price for peace. This time, the Israeli government made the decision not to exercise sovereignty over territory to which it is legally entitled under international law and forgo reunifications of the Jewish State. Let's not underestimate the sacrifice the Jewish people have made in delaying the reunification of our ancestral homeland. While peace with a prominent Arab country and presumably enhanced economic ties is wonderful and should be celebrated, this is extremely painful for the Jews who live in our biblical homeland. It's not easy to ask people who have already waited 5,000 years to now wait even longer to reunify their country, but that is exactly what the Israeli government just asked its own citizens to do.
To date, the Palestinian Arabs have rejected every peace initiative, large or small, for generations because they are still clinging to the delusion that the Jews are going to one day disappear or be driven into the sea by Arab armies. The UAE is now publicly accepting a reality they had embraced a long time ago behind closed doors — Israel is not going away. The Jewish State is not an aberration on the map but rather a permanent fixture of the geopolitical landscape in the region and a partner for economic growth.
Israel is the de facto expression of Zionism, the civil rights movement of the Jewish people, the oldest and most persecuted minority community in the world. To deny the Jewish people self-sovereignty is to deny a basic civil right, and the epitome of racism. Hopefully, Arab countries will continue to publicly recognize the reality of the Jewish State and openly engage in economic and diplomatic relations with it, all of which will increase the prospects for a lasting peace.
Sincerely,
Brooke Goldstein
Executive Director, The Lawfare Project