Emerging Gulf-Israel Alignment & the Palestinian Paradigm
- R. David Harden
- Trends are accelerating an emerging regional alignment between the Gulf States and Israel. First, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Israel collectively regard Iran as an existential threat to their states. The differences with Israel over the future of Palestine are less consequential than the perception of the Iranian threat and the need for a tacit collective counter-strategy.
- Second, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Israel are much more confident regional actors than they were in the mid-1990s. The UAE projects immense economic strength and Saudi Arabia has similar aspirations. Aside from its regional military strength, Israel has become a technology power that is attractive to global finance, investment, and talent.
- Lastly, the political and economic elites in the Gulf and Israel desire these deepening economic and technological ties and are creating conditions on the ground where their citizens are increasingly open to these opportunities.
- Israel's inability to resolve its conflict with the Palestinians and its drag of regular wars in Gaza undermines its ability to assert the nation's full potential. But this potential historic Gulf-Israel alignment fundamentally changes the geo-political paradigm for the Palestinians. The region is moving beyond a "post-1948" period where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dominated nation-state relationships in the Middle East.
- The next generation of Palestinian leadership will have to adopt a new strategy - one which will be quite uncomfortable for the old PLO guard. Freed from the dogma of the last 70 years, the Palestinians could envision a very different role for themselves in the Middle East.
The writer, managing director of the Georgetown Strategy Group, was former Assistant Administrator at USAID's Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance, and led the USAID Mission to the West Bank and Gaza in 2014-2016.
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