In normal times, a peace agreement in the Middle East is a rare event. The deal struck between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, brokered by US President Donald Trump, was a welcome surprise.

This is an article published earlier this year and selected by our committee of commissioning editors as one of the best of 2020.

These times are not normal. The region is gripped simultaneously by the coronavirus epidemic and the worst ever refugee crisis. The ancient civilisations of Syria and Iraq struggle to recover from two decades of war, and now, with the once proud business capital of Beirut lying in ruins, few anticipated that Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) would agree to peace.

Even more surprising, the “historic” deal was brokered by United States president Donald Trump who hailed it as “important, a very big event, something that has not been done in more than 25 years.” “Everybody said this would be impossible,” he added proudly.

The deal – only the third secured by Israel with its Arab neighbours, the UAE, Egypt, and Jordan – charts “a new path that will unlock the potential in the region,” Trump said. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was gracious, calling it “welcome, brave and a badly needed act of statesmanship.”

The UAE is the first Gulf state to come to an agreement with Israel. There is some expectation that others may follow suit, notably Bahrain and Oman. The agreement specifies that Israel will suspend its annexation in Palestinian territories on the west bank of the river Jordan and may pave the way for resolution of the Palestinian question.

The Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) and its supporters were quick to say that the text omits to specify how long the suspension of annexation will last, and Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu says he remains “committed to annexation.”

Many Palestinians see the agreement as a betrayal, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has recalled the Palestinian ambassador to the UAE. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Ankara was considering suspending diplomatic ties with the UAE to show solidarity with the Palestinians.

After the 1967 Six Day War, Israel seized Arab land on the West Bank and began building Jewish settlements on Palestinian homelands. Many Palestinians left to build their lives elsewhere, but the encroachment on the lives of those that stayed has been a running sore in any peace negotiations brokered by the West. Many people with decades of experience in the Persian Gulf and other parts of the Arab world find it hard to conceive that Mr Netanyahu will ever give up on further settlements.

Many geopolitical analysts, especially in the United States, have painted the deal as a win-win for Trump and Netanyahu. With Foreign Affairs magazine devoting a significant section of its September issue to a critique of the Trump administration’s foreign policy (or lack of it), the president can be excused for a tweet or two railing against his critics. One such critic is Richard Haas, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who suggests the president’s disruption has left the US and the world considerably worse off and that, in the event of his re-election in November, “the word ‘destruction’ might be a better term with which to describe current American foreign policy.”

We should expect Air Force One to head for the Holy Land and the Gulf so that the American and Israeli leaders can celebrate in Jerusalem, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai, and take full advantage of the photo opportunities that such a trip would bring. Both need a distraction from bad headlines and diminishing popularity. In Trump’s case this includes poor polls, attacks on the US Postal Service aimed at postponing the election, and a spat with China. For Netanyahu, the distraction would be from the corruption charges he faces.

Both Trump and Netanyahu claim the new deal will lead to the further isolation of Iran.  President Hassan Rouhani described it as “unacceptable,” a “huge mistake,” and “a betrayal” by the UAE. Tehran’s reaction clearly irritated UAE Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash, who summoned Iran’s ambassador to deliver what officials described as a “sharply worded letter.”  Gargash tweeted, “The UAE-Israeli peace treaty is a sovereign decision not directed at Iran. We say this and repeat it.”

In any case, Washington’s hopes of international support for action against Tehran’s regime were short lived. Within 24 hours of the announcement, the United Nations Security Council rebuffed a US proposal to extend an arms embargo on Iran when it expires in two months’ time. China and Russia voted against it, and Britain, France, and Germany all abstained.

The geopolitics are not all that matters in the Middle East. There are other realities, and to understand them, we need to look at the Israel-UAE agreement in detail. We must put it in the context of the modern history of the UAE, a group of seven separate and very different states only just approaching its 50^th year. It began with a population of only 277,000. Now it is nudging 10 million.

The federation grew out of the Trucial States, a British protectorate formed in the 19^th century on the south-eastern seaboard of the Persian Gulf and was made up of sheikhdoms. The two largest, Abu Dhabi and Dubai, have provided the political leadership of the UAE since Britain decided it could no longer afford to defend states east of Suez.

Apart from providing crucial bases for the UK, the Trucial States comprised little more than fishing and pearling ports, historic settlements, and vast deserts and mountain ranges. Present day rulers are descended from nomadic tribes. Yet Sheikh Zayed al Nahyan, first ruler of Abu Dhabi, which has by far the largest land mass, built his city into a modern Muslim society which, since 1960, has been greatly enriched by oil production.

One hundred kilometres down the road is Dubai. Sheikh Rashid al Maktoum built a prosperous city based on duties levied on gold and spices smuggled between Britain and India through the city’s smugglers’ creek. This revenue, with the skilful advice of Mehdi al Tajir, enabled him to build Dubai into the Middle East’s leading trading, financial, and commercial centre.  The city that Rashid built is truly remarkable: a major centre for over 100 banks with fine beaches and spectacular tourist attractions.  As a boy, Rashid’s son Mohammed watched this happen and now, as ruler, has built on his father’s success. Today, Dubai’s airport is the world’s busiest by passenger traffic, and Dubai’s leading airline, Emirates, the fourth largest in the world.

Dubai is highly westernised and globally-connected. It has upheld the Arab boycott of Israel, referring to that nation’s capital as “Occupied Jerusalem.” However, the UAE’s two cities – Dubai and Abu Dhabi – have for several years used unofficial channels to deal with Israel, long before Trump got into the act. Large numbers of Palestinians live in the UAE, many of them working for the government; many believe negotiation, not guerrilla warfare, is the best way to solve the Palestinian question. There are strong connections at between the two countries in the fields of science and medicine.

This is where the proposed interaction is highly relevant. It is worth quoting the whole relevant paragraph:

Delegations from Israel and the UAE will meet in the coming weeks to sign bilateral agreements regarding investment, tourism, direct flights, security, telecommunications, technology, energy, healthcare, culture, the environment, the establishment of reciprocal embassies, and other areas of mutual benefit. Opening direct ties between two of the Middle East’s most dynamic societies and advanced economies will transform the region by spurring economic growth, enhancing technological innovation, and forging closer people-to-people relations.

By any standards, that is a huge agenda involving the kind of detail that is only found in multi-country institutions such as the European Commission. It will take time to put it into practice and, in the short-term, may not solve the Middle East’s most pressing conflicts. But it plays to Sheikh Mohamed’s desire to elevate Dubai into a truly high-tech and medical research centre, and for Abu Dhabi to have a higher profile in the Middle East’s internal and external relations.

Colin Chapman is a writer, broadcaster and public speaker, who specialises in geopolitics, international economics, and global media issues. He is a former president of AIIA NSW and was appointed a fellow of the AIIA in 2017.

This article is published under a Creative Commons Licence and may be republished with attribution.