On August 16, 2020, Israel and the United Arab Emirates opened direct telephony services. [15] Emirati company APEX National Investment and Israel`s Tera Group have signed a covid-19 research partnership agreement, making it the first trade agreement signed since normalizing relations between companies in the two countries. [137] Mossad Director Yossi Cohen arrived in the United Arab Emirates on August 18 to discuss security cooperation, regional developments, and issues affecting the two countries with National Security Advisor Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan. It was the first visit by an Israeli official since the agreement was announced. [138] The United Arab Emirates officially ended its boycott of Israel on August 29. [139] A spokesman for El Al issued a statement on September 28. It was announced that the airline will operate El Al 971, the first commercial flight between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, from Tel Aviv`s Ben Gurion Airport to Abu Dhabi. [143] Saudi Arabia allowed the use of its airspace for the aircraft to fly directly to the United Arab Emirates and it landed at Abu Dhabi International Airport. The flight carried a delegation of U.S. and Israeli officials, including Jared Kushner, Robert C. O`Brien and Israeli National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat.
The plane had painted the word “peace” in Hebrew, Arabic and English above its cockpit window and received a red carpet. [144] [145] Saudi Arabia and Bahrain subsequently permanently opened their airspace to flights between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. [146] [147] Palestinian nervousness will increase after Bahrain joins the agreement. Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi said the agreement would pave the way for peace agreements with other countries and welcomed the suspension of unilateral annexation. Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid hailed the deal as an “important step” for normalization with the UAE, saying it showed that mutual agreements were the way forward for Israel`s relations with other nations, rather than unilateral measures such as annexation. Israeli Labor Party leader Amir Peretz also shared the view, saying Israel`s development and security lie in such agreements. He hoped for a similar deal with the Palestinians. [37] And so the most important thing that has changed, frankly, is the diplomacy of the Trump administration.
The Trump administration came to the area and tried to negotiate a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, which was very inclined in favor of Israel. He considered the existence of a Palestinian state, but one that would be extremely fragmented, with very little authority, very vassal of Israel. And it was an offer that the Palestinians categorically rejected. They refused to come to the table and left the peace process deadlocked. What it did was tell Prime Minister Netanyahu that I will not wait for a peace agreement. I will go ahead and annex these settlement areas in the West Bank. These are places where Jewish settlers built apartments. I will incorporate them into the State of Israel with or without a peace agreement. Hanan Ashrawi, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), criticized the deal, writing on Twitter: “Israel has been rewarded for not openly declaring what it has done illegally and persistently to Palestine since the beginning of the occupation.” [6] Fatah accused the UAE of ignoring “its national, religious and humanitarian duties” to the Palestinian people, while Hamas said it was a “treacherous stab in the back of the Palestinian people”[6] and claimed that the agreement was a “gratuitous reward” for Israeli “crimes and violations against the Palestinian people.” [40] On 7. In July, the foreign ministers of Egypt, France, Germany and Jordan issued a statement declaring that “any annexation of the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 would constitute a violation of international law” and “would have serious consequences for the security and stability of the region and would constitute a major obstacle to efforts to achieve a comprehensive and just peace.” The foreign ministers said they were “discussing how to resume fruitful engagement between the Israeli and Palestinian sides and offered our support to facilitate the path of negotiations.” [99] [100] After a second meeting in Jordan on September 24, the four again called for the resumption of negotiations between the two sides. There will be “no comprehensive and lasting peace without resolving the conflict on the basis of the two-state solution,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi told reporters after the meeting. The four also welcomed the recent agreements establishing relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
Egypt`s Sameh Shoukry said the agreements were an “important development that would lead to more support and interaction to achieve a comprehensive peace.” He accused the UAE of doing Trump a favor in the upcoming U.S. presidential election. [90] Lebanese President Michel Aoun, whose Free Patriotic Movement party is an ally of Hezbollah, said Lebanon would be open to peace with Israel if their mutual problems were resolved and that the UAE had the right to normalize relations with Israel because it was a sovereign nation. [91] Aaron David Miller, a longtime Middle East peace negotiator who now works at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the deal was “win-win-win-lose” because it brought diplomatic victories to the Emirates, Mr. Netanyahu, and Mr. Trump. “The big losers are the Palestinians, who have seen the Arab world move closer to Israel and apparently reward Netanyahu for ignoring the Palestinians and undermining the interests of the Palestinians,” he said. Negotiations were expected to last up to nine months to reach the final status of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by mid-2014. The Israeli negotiating team was led by experienced negotiator Tzipi Livni, while the Palestinian delegation was led by Saeb Erekat, also a former negotiator. Negotiations began in Washington, D.C[68] and were to be transferred to the King David Hotel in Jerusalem and eventually to Hebron. [69] A deadline has been set for the development of an agreement by April 29, 2014.
After the deadline, negotiations failed, with US special envoy Indyk blaming Israel primarily, while the US State Department insisted that neither side was to blame, but that “both sides did incredibly unnecessary things.” [70] The partial normalization of Arab relations with Israel—a significant surrender of influence for Palestinian rights in the service of other Arab interests—comes as divisions between Israel and the Palestinians continue to expand. These postponements make it even more difficult to reach a negotiated agreement. The deal represented a major political turnaround for Netanyahu, who had long pushed for settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank in a bid to annex the region. Netanyahu has come under political pressure to be flexible, as three of the last elections gave him only a majority in a coalition government and he was prosecuted in 2021. In 2019, the Trump administration reversed decades of U.S. policy by declaring that settlements in the West Bank did not violate international law, a move that threatened the two-state solution that had long been seen as the key to lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The Trump administration`s Middle East policy, drafted by senior presidential adviser Jared Kushner and released in January 2020, endorsed Netanyahu`s plan to annex existing settlements. After Yousef Al Otaiba, the UAE`s ambassador to the United States, wrote an opinion piece in June 2020 warning that annexation would jeopardize better relations between Israel and the Arab world, Kushner saw an opportunity and intervened to facilitate the talks. .