Trump or Netanyahu, who to believe about the UAE – opinion

Once more, we have to turn to that most unlikely source of truth: the US president.

By JEFF BARAK
ISRAELI F-35 takes off from an airbase in southern Israel (photo credit: AMIT AGRONOV/ISRAEL AIR FORCE)
ISRAELI F-35 takes off from an airbase in southern Israel
(photo credit: AMIT AGRONOV/ISRAEL AIR FORCE)
Who to believe: Netanyahu or Trump?
With both men’s well-deserved reputation for mendacity, it’s a tough one to call. History though will likely show that on the specific topic of Israel’s normalization of relations with the UAE, the US president is, for once, sticking close to the truth.
When this breakthrough agreement was announced earlier this month, the prime minister vehemently rejected claims he had canceled his plans to annex parts of the West Bank in return for Abu Dhabi’s agreement to formalize ties with Jerusalem. At a press conference in Jerusalem, Netanyahu insisted “there is no change in my plan to apply sovereignty, our sovereignty, in Judea and Samaria.... This issue remains on the table.”
A day later in Washington, Trump had this to say to reporters: “It’s [the planned annexation] something they’ve discussed but Israel has agreed not to do that, more than just off the table, they’ve agreed not to do it, and I think that was very important and I think it was a great concession by Israel.”
Trump is indeed correct that the cancellation of the planned annexation is an important move, although more for Israel’s own long-term interests than any immediate diplomatic gain. Any significant unilateral annexation of the West Bank would have undoubtedly brought Israel to the point of no return on the way to becoming a fully-fledged apartheid state.
It’s debatable though how great a concession the decision to cancel (or “suspend” in Netanyahu’s evasive language) the planned annexation actually is. This is due to the fact that Netanyahu, despite his public posturing, had made no concrete preparations for the application of Israeli rule to the territories by his self-declared date of July 1. Facing strong political opposition from Blue and White inside the coalition government, and the clear opposition of the defense establishment, it’s unlikely the move was about to take place.
Nevertheless, if the normalization agreement with the UAE provides Netanyahu with a face-saving tree to climb down over annexation, then that’s simply another benefit to the historic agreement with Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed, an accord for which Netanyahu deserves full credit.
While there have been open diplomatic contacts between Israel and a number of Gulf states since the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinians – Yitzhak Rabin visited Oman in 1994 and his successor Shimon Peres also visited there in 1996 – and there were short-lived Israel trade offices in both Oman and Qatar toward the end of the 1990s, these contacts never led to the desired outcome of full diplomatic relations.
ASSUMING THIS deal does bring peace between Israel and the UAE, the next question to arise is whether it justifies Israel taking the risk of turning a blind eye to the United States potentially equipping the UAE military with F-35 stealth fighters and advanced armed drones. Since 1973, American policy has been to ensure that Israel maintains a qualitative military edge over the country’s Arab neighbors, a policy which such a mooted arms sale would overturn.
Again, there’s clear water between Netanyahu and Trump. While the Yediot Aharonot report last week probably overstepped the mark by claiming that Israel had officially agreed to the arms sale going through as part of the normalization package, Nahum Barnea’s exclusive was far from the “fake news” Netanyahu claimed.
Once more, we have to turn to that most unlikely source of truth: the US president. At a White House briefing, Trump confirmed an arms deal was on the table and deliberately linked it to the proposed peace agreement.
“They have the money and they would like to order quite a few F-35s.... They’d like to buy F-35s. We’ll see what happens. It’s under review, but they made a great advance in peace in the Middle East,” the US president said.
Of course, it will many years before any F-35s potentially end up in the UAE, and there’s absolutely no guarantee that Trump will still be in power next year to nudge the deal through. But the fact that the deal is on the table sets a worrying precedent for Israel. What’s to stop Egypt, Israel’s most long-standing peace partner in the region, from demanding access to better-quality US weapons or, with their greater economic strength, Saudi Arabia finally deciding to normalize relations with Israel in return for an F-35 squadron or two?
The normalization of relations with Abu Dhabi is an important development for Israel, but the prime minister owes the Israeli public a truthful account of the behind-the-scenes decisions that led to it and the real price he paid; just as he owes Israelis a truthful explanation as to why he is again holding them hostage to the threat of an unnecessary fourth round of elections in less than two years.
The writer is a former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.