Sunday, March 07, 2021

Abraham Accords Lead To Regional Alliance

A recent report suggesting that Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates are exploring the possibility of creating a four-nation defense alliance has potentially game-changing ramifications.

While the last few months since the Abraham Accords and normalization agreements signed between Israel and numerous Arab and Muslim countries have witnessed many unprecedented events, this could outshine them all.

The historic narrative of the Israel-Arab conflict has been that the region and the wider Arab and Muslim world will not countenance the existence of the Jewish State, and have tried on many occasions in the past to extinguish it.

That has come to an end in recent years...

The defense alliance can and should ensure that Israel help them to defeat the Iranian menace in the Gulf, and the proxy war raging in Yemen. Israeli intelligence capabilities should compensate for America's recent capitulation to the Houthis. The Israeli navy should operate its submarines and new Sa'ar missile corvettes from Emirati and Bahraini ports.

In return, Israel should be seeking assurances that cooperation is not a one-way street, and that Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain should help Israel fight its enemies, many of which are closely allied to or receive funding and armaments from Iran.

[The emerging alliance] should be used to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict once and for all. 

Helping Israel destroy Palestinian violent rejectionism and win the conflict is a win-win for the Sunni nations in the defense alliance. They would be providing a quid pro quo for Israel helping it rid its own borders of enemies, and it would be ending the conflict which many see as an obstacle to greater rapprochement with the Jewish State in the region.

This would also allow all of the nations in the defense alliance, which could then be enlarged, to focus all of their energies towards the greatest threat to the region, Iran, its proxies and its relentless attempt to attain nuclear weapons capability.

It would also break down the last barrier towards full relations between Israel and the wider Sunni world, thus allowing for the sole focus for both to be on breaking the back of the Iranian ever-growing stranglehold on the region.
[The Middle East Forum]
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