Last Thursday, Donald Trump announced the normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Israel is also committing to not annexing the West Bank.
Now this is key folks, Saudi Arabia is not officially party to the agreement, but its relationship with the UAE is so close that we should assume that it approved of the deal, and that the UAE will represent its interests in Israel.
So, I have a theory. I think everything we are seeing on the news is tied together and leading to major changes in the Middle East.
The explosion in Beirut, crippling Hezbollah, the Israeli/UAE agreement, and even the recent seizing of 4 Iranian tankers headed to Venezuela by the US .
But before we can get into the details, we first need to know who the players are.
The first thing my wife asked when the news broke about the agreement was, Who are the United Arab Emirates, are they the same as Saudi Arabia? The short answer is no. Saudi Arabia is a separate country from the UAE.
So exactly who are the United Arab Emirates?
How about a little history?
The United Arab Emirates is one of the Persian Gulf States, a desert country in the southeast of the Arabian Peninsula with a coastline on the Persian Gulf (Arab Gulf) and the Gulf of Oman.
The UAE borders Oman and Saudi Arabia and is across the Persian Gulf from Iran.
The coastal region of UAE was known for a long time as the Pirate Coast. The seafaring inhabitants made a living by pirating trade vessels in the area. The loose federation of sheikdoms came under British administration in the mid 19th century, then known as the Trucial States until 1971, when they gained independence from the United Kingdom.
The UAE came into existence in December 1971 when six emirates formed a federation: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al-Quwain, and Fujairah; Ras Al Khaimah joined the alliance in 1972.
The United Arab Emirates is about the size of Austria, or slightly smaller than the US State of Maine.
The country consists mostly of barren landscape with the largest sand desert in the world. Along the coast stretches a strip of marshes, low-lying salt flats, lagoons, intertidal mudflats, and mangrove swamps.
What they do have is oil. Lots of it.
The emirate has a population of 9.3 million people. The capital city of the United Arab Emirates is Abu Dhabi and the largest city is Dubai.
The UAE did not experience the “Arab Spring” unrest seen elsewhere in the Middle East in 2010-11, partly because of the government’s multi-year, $1.6-billion infrastructure investment plan for the poorer northern emirates, and its aggressive pursuit of advocates of political reform.
The UAE in recent years has played a growing role in regional affairs. In addition to donating billions of dollars in economic aid to help stabilize Egypt. The UAE was one of the first countries to join the Defeat-ISIS coalition, and to participate as a key partner in a Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen.
So let’s turn to the other party in the recent agreement, Israel.
The State of Israel was declared in 1948, after Britain withdrew from its mandate of Palestine which was established as a result of the Treaty of Versailles at the end of WWI.
The UN proposed partitioning the area into Arab and Jewish states, and Arab armies that rejected the UN plan were defeated.
Israel was admitted as a member of the UN in 1949 and saw rapid population growth, primarily due to migration from Europe and the Middle East, over the following years.
Israel fought wars against its Arab neighbors in 1967 and 1973, followed by peace treaties with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994.
Israel took control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 war, and subsequently administered those territories through military authorities.
Israel and Palestinian officials signed a number of interim agreements in the 1990s that created an interim period of Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
Prime Minister Benjamin NETANYAHU has led the Israeli Government since 2009.
Now to those opposed to the agreement. Number one on the opposition list is Palestine.
Palestine is a small region of land—roughly 2,400 square miles—that has played a prominent role in the ancient and modern history of the Middle East.
Violent attempts to control the land have defined much of the history of Palestine, making it the site of constant political conflict. Arab people who call this territory home are known as Palestinians, and the people of Palestine have a strong desire to create a free and independent state in a contested region of the world that’s considered sacred by many groups.
Until 1948, Palestine was typically referred to the geographic region located between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Much of this land is now considered present-day Israel.
Today, Palestine theoretically includes the West Bank (a territory that divides modern-day Israel and Jordan) and the Gaza Strip (land bordering modern-day Israel and Egypt). However the borders aren’t formally set, and many areas claimed by Palestinians have been occupied by Israelis for years.
More than 135 United Nations member countries recognize Palestine as an independent state, but Israel and some other countries, including the United States, don’t agree..
Throughout history, Palestine has been ruled by numerous groups, including the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Seljuk Turks, Crusaders, Egyptians, Mamelukes and Islamists.
From about 1517 to 1917, the Ottoman Empire (Turks) ruled much of the region.
When World War I ended in 1918, the British took control of Palestine. The League of Nations issued a British mandate for Palestine—a document that gave Britain the responsibility of establishing a Jewish national homeland in Palestine—which went into effect in 1923.
In 1947, the United Nations proposed a plan to partition Palestine into two sections: an independent Jewish state and an independent Arab state, with Jerusalem as internationalized territory.
Jewish leaders accepted the plan, but many Palestinian Arabs vehemently opposed it.
Arab groups argued that they represented the majority of the population in certain regions and should be granted more territory. They began to form volunteer armies throughout Palestine.
In May 1948, less than a year after the Partition of Palestine was introduced, Britain withdrew from Palestine and Israel became an independent state.
Estimates suggest between 700,000 and 900,000 Palestinians fled or were forced to leave their homes.
Almost immediately, war broke out between Jews and Arabs in the region. This is the conflict you still see today.
In 2006, Hamas, a Sunni Islamist militant group, won the Palestinian legislative elections.
Many countries consider Hamas to be a terrorist organization. The group has carried out suicide bombings and repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel.
So Palestinians say they are still fighting for an official state that’s formally recognized by all countries.
Although Palestinians occupy key areas of land, including the West Bank and the Gaza strip, large populations of Israelis continue to settle in these locations.
Many international rights groups consider these settlements illegal, the borders aren’t clearly defined, and persistent conflict continues to be the norm.
So let’s go back to the recent agreement.
It appears the United Arab Emirates are willing to cut a deal to bring an end to the Arab Israeli conflict and they have some confidence that Trump will give them the support necessary to withstand the opposition —foreign and domestic—that will arrive after their having apparently sold out the cause of Palestinian liberation.
What’s more, these monarchs’ eagerness to work with Israel is sincere. The UAE has not hated Israel the way other Arab states have.
The final consideration is that the majority of Middle East nations are Sunni Muslim.
It’s not known precisely how many of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims are Shiites. The Shiites are a minority, making up between 10 percent and 15 percent of the Muslim population — certainly fewer than 250 million, all told.
The Shiites are concentrated in Iran, southern Iraq and southern Lebanon.
So the majority of Arab states hate Iran on religious grounds. They fear an Iran with nuclear weapons would destroy not only Israel, but many of the Sunni Arab states if it had the chance.
The Trump administration’s hostility toward Iran (or more precisely, Barack Obama’s deal with Iran, which froze Iran’s nuclear program but guaranteed the survival of its regime) is a reassuring and fully supported by the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
Some say that Trump announced the deal as a political move. You are right, but those who have the most to gain by this deal are the UAE and the Israelis. This deal is an insurance policy.
If Trump is defeated in November and Biden and Harris revert back to the policies under the Obama Administration concerning Iran, the UAE and Israel will be the biggest losers.
So let’s go back to my theory.
I think everything we are seeing on the news is tied together and leading to major changes in the Middle East.
The explosion in Beirut, crippling Hezbollah, the Israeli/UAE agreement, and even the recent seizing of 4 Iranian tankers headed to Venezuela by the US .
With the history I just provided, let’s ask some questions.
Who would benefit from a bomb blowing up in Beirut, Lebanon, leaving 250,000 homeless and bringing an end to a government led by Hezbollah, a group hell bent on destroying Israel.
Israel immediately said they had nothing to do with it.
However, President Trump stated he wasn’t sure it was an accident and that U.S. military leaders “seemed to think it was an attack. It was a bomb of some kind.”
Remember, Hezbollah is a Shiite Muslim political party and militant group based in Lebanon and became a vital asset to Iran.
Again, Hezbollah is a Shiite resistance movement (most Arab nations are Sunni), and stated its ideology in a 1985 manifesto that vowed to expel Western powers from Lebanon, called for the destruction of the Israeli state, and pledged allegiance to Iran’s supreme leader.
Hamas is a Sunni resistance movement based in Palestine but it shares the common goal with Hezbollah to destroy Israel.
So, the two groups share common tactics and common goals as well as the fact that both are backed by Iran. According to an Israeli military source, Hezbollah assists Hamas with bomb production. Can anyone say ammonium nitrate?
So back again to my theory. Without boots on the ground, Hezbollah has been dealt a devastating blow by the explosion in Beirut.
As a result Hamas has lost a key ally, Syria has lost the support of a huge militant extremist group, and Iran has lost the effectiveness of two branches of their terrorist networks, Hezbollah and Hamas.
While all this is taking place, the US seizes 4 Iranian tankers, further putting the squeeze on Iran by enforcing sanctions.
Then the final straw. The United Arab Emirates signs a deal with Israel signaling the movement by Sunni Arab nations to bring an end to the Arab Israeli conflict.
I don’t know, but it sure looks like Iran is having a bad day.
So what do you think folks. Is my theory just the crazy thoughts of a crazy old history professor?
Or is there something to the events we have recently witnessed in the middle east?