Alwaght- While the US efforts to implement Trump initiative known as "the deal of the century" to close the Palestine cause and end the Arab-Israeli dispute forever have all met their failure, it seems that Washington still insists on proceeding with the plan and hopes to accelerate the diplomatic normalization between Tel Aviv and the Arab countries.
On Wednesday, the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a Twitter message blasted the recent anti-American and Israeli statement published by the Arab foreign ministers, saying that it is time for the Arab countries to stop boycotting Tel Aviv and start partnership with it.
The Arab statement come in response to a last week statement by Pompeo who in a largely controversial and provocative measure said that the US recognizes the settlements the Israelis build in the occupied Palestinian territories in west of Jordan River. The Arab countries' foreign ministers gathered in the Egyptian capital Cairo, condemning the US recognition of Tel Aviv's constructions in Ouccupied Palestinian lands, and highlighting the illegality Settlements.
The US paradoxical stances, which on the one hand recognize the Israeli settlements and deal a blow to the so-called peace process and on the other hand call for peace negotiations, reveal the imperious American dealing with the Arab countries to get their company to the deal of the century project as it discloses how decisively the diplomatic normalization plays a role in the American West Asia policy under President Donald Trump.
Trump extensively works to bring into existence an anti-Iranian coalition, or NATO-style Arab-Israeli front. Although such a coalition is yet to officially come to existence, Trump struggles to, using the Saudi and some of the other Arab countries' petrodollars, forge Israeli-Arab agreements in the face of Iran as an emerging power in the region.
Saudi Arabia is one of the countries that over the past decade has been moving to strengthening the relations with the Israeli regime and recognizing it as a legitimate state in the region.
Saudi Arabia is one of the countries that over the past decade has been moving to strengthen the relations with the Israeli regime and recognize it as a legitimate state in the region. After assumption of power by King Salman bin Abdulaziz, Riyadh insisted that the main enemy of the Arabs is Iran not the Israeli regime, a stance injecting optimism into Washington's project to diplomatically normalize between the Persian Gulf Arab monarchies and Tel Aviv.
The Arab-Israeli normalization project is not a new case. Initial steps towards it were taken when in 1977 the contemporaneous Egyptian President Anwar Sadat visited the occupied Palestinian territories and met with the Israeli leaders. Sadat's move marked breaking of a taboo never broken in the Arab world to that date.
The Egyptian decision for a thaw with the Israelis was taken following a series of defeats the Arab states sustained in wars with the Israeli regime. After 12 days of secret talks with the Israeli leaders with US mediation, Sadat finally signed on September 17, 1978 first Arab-Israeli peace treaty in Camp David.
Since the 1990s, some Arab countries sought a path similar to Sadat's. Jordan toped the number of countries interested to normalize ties with Tel Aviv.
However, the Arab uprisings over the past decade on the one hand and the sweeping victories of the resistant groups, mainly in Lebanon and Gaza, over the much-vaunted Israeli military, left impacts on the Arab and Muslim public's tendency towards compromises to the Israelis.
But the Israelis and the Americans are staging a massive propaganda campaign to paint the truth differently. Pompeo, for example, promotes the idea that a tendency towards normalization is now in the making among the Arab elites. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does the same. He reveals the secret meetings between the Israeli and Arab diplomats and also exchanged visits as signs that it is time for normalization with Persian Gulf Arab countries.
Pompeo referred to a conference of a small group of Arab liberal thinkers who on November 20 gathered in London to push efforts for Arab-Israeli normalization. New York Times investigation has found that the meeting was funded by American Jewish lobbies. Additionally, the elites highlighted peace efforts to go based on the pre-1967 borders, something opposite to the Israeli and American measures in the occupied territories. In fact, any independent view of the roots of the crisis guides to the American racist and biased measures that encourage the Israeli settlements projects and pave the way to annexation of over 60 percent of the West Bank to the already-occupied territories.
Abdulbari Atwan, a senior Arab journalist, describes the Arab elites who are praised for their pro-normalization stances by Pompeo as American mouthpieces forsaking all Arab and Islamic values of justice. Atwan praised Tunisian President Qais Saeed who labeled any form of normalization as a "betrayal" of the Palestinian cause.
This vision is augmenting in the Arab world day by day. The proof to this is rise of new President Qais Saeed who has come to power in Tunisia democratically, contrary to the despotic rulers in such Arab countries as Saudi Arabia and the UAE who do not represent their people. Since the beginning of his administration, Saeed took positions supportive of Palestinians and deprecatory to the Israelis.
