2020 brought us COVID-19, but it also brought a new Middle East

Recaps of 2020 that will be written in dozens of respected periodicals around the world in the coming weeks will surely not be positive. The coronavirus pandemic this year will be widely panned as an annus horribilis, a term meaning a year of disaster or misfortune made famous by Queen Elizabeth II when she used it to characterize 1992, the year when the marriages of three of her four children fell apart and Windsor Castle was badly damaged by fire. In Israel, too, media reviews of 2020 will surely not place it in a positive light, especially given the loss of nearly 3,000 lives to COVID-19 and the havoc that the pandemic has wrought on people's livelihoods and the country's economy. In addition, 2020 has proven to be yet another year of political dysfunction and instability. But not all has been dismal. This year will also go down in Israeli history as the one when the Jewish state took enormous strides, via peace and normalization treaties with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan, to further break out of its long regional isolation. For a few weeks back in September, it seemed to be raining peace agreements. And on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Neom, Saudi Arabia, with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. No, this was not the first time that senior Israeli and Saudi officials have met, nor did the meeting lead to any dramatic announcement regarding the establishment of formal ties. But that the meeting was leaked to the public – and it beggars belief that this would have happened without the consent of all the parties – sends important messages to various significant audiences. The first audience is US president-elect Joe Biden. The message to Biden is simple: the Mideast table has been reset – including a spanking new Israel-UAE-Saudi place setting – that he and his new administration will need to take into account when re-assessing Washington's Iran policy. It is no coincidence that this meeting took place now, a few weeks before Biden is set to move into the Oval Office, just as it was no coincidence that the deals with the UAE and Bahrain were consummated just before the US elections. Israel and these Gulf countries are banding together now, in the waning days of the Trump administration, so that if the Biden Administration would want to roll back Trump's policies on Iran and take a much softer stand, it will come up against a firm wall of opposition from America's main allies in the region. This time, it will not only be Netanyahu squaring off against the president of the United States, as was the case when Barack Obama pushed the Iranian nuclear deal during his presidency. Another key audience for whom the meeting was aimed is Iran itself. This meeting served Iran notice that its biggest and most formidable rivals in the region are teaming up against it, and are now even willing to do it somewhat publicly. The cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia is currently in the diplomatic and intelligence/security realms, but Iran's leaders – after this meeting – must be asking themselves whether that cooperation could quickly turn into military cooperation as well. To the domestic Saudi audience, the publication of the meeting – despite an official denial by the Saudi foreign minister – signals that while the Palestinian issue may be of great importance to the older generation of Saudi leaders, such as King Salman, the new generation, represented by MBS, is unwilling to sacrifice its future interests on the Palestinian alter. This signal is also one to that the leadership of the Palestinian Authority should be paying close attention. Bringing Israeli-Saudi cooperation, which for years has been a poorly kept secret, out of the mist and into broad sunlight is to be encouraged. Everyone from Israel's close friends like the United States, to its foes like Iran and Turkey, would benefit from seeing plainly that the Middle East map has changed significantly, and that old policies and assumptions need to readjust to take into consideration the new regional alliances being established in 2020 on the ground.

2020 brought us COVID-19, but it also brought a new Middle East

Bringing Israeli-Saudi cooperation, which for years has been a poorly kept secret, out of the mist and into broad sunlight is to be encouraged.

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