Barack Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize for, well…nobody’s really sure what. Being (half) black and winning an election, so far as anyone can tell. The fact that Obama went on to preside over Libya becoming a failed state, the rise of ISIS and a murderous secret war-by-drone-strike was an odd contrast to such fawning.
Don’t expect Donald Trump to win a Peace Prize any time soon – despite achieving what no American president has managed in 40 years.
The Israel-United Arab Emirates news is actually much bigger than the American press is reporting. President Donald Trump actually does deserve a great deal of credit, and if the deal were reported accurately, he would get that credit.
“Accurate reporting” and “the American press” are phrases rarely heard together. Especially where Trump is concerned. Mid-East peace deal? Pfft. The American media are too busy fretting over whether the White House rose garden is “racist”.
The American media has totally missed the bigger story.
First, to review, the United Arab Emirates and Israel have decided to publicly have diplomatic relations in something they are calling the Abraham Accords. This is groundbreaking in and of itself. Though the countries have privately been collaborating for some time, they will make it public now. That means each nation will recognize the other; they will have embassies; they will have access to each other’s phone and telecommunication networks. Aviation, commerce and tourism will flow between the nations.
To understand how big a step this is, requires understanding longstanding anti-Israel sentiment in the Middle East. As is common with Arab countries, the UAE banned travel to Israel. In fact, as far as they were concerned, Israel just did not exist: Israel was blacked out of history textbooks. It was blacked out of maps, as was its flag. Some airlines refused to even fly over Israel.
Those redactions to textbooks will go away now. The United Arab Emirates will join Jordan and Egypt in recognizing Israel.
Now comes word that Bahrain and Oman will follow suit. Eventually, we could see Saudi Arabia also extend public recognition, though, like the UAE, Saudi Arabia has been privately cooperative with Israel for some time.
This is the big-picture stuff the American media is either missing or refusing to report. The “Abraham Accords”, as they’re being called, are a vital step in the slow, painful process of legitimising Israel in the eyes of its Arab neighbours. As more stubborn Arab dominos fall, others will follow with gathering pace.
Especially in the context of the wider geopolitics of the Mediterranean.
Right now, there is a diplomatic dispute between Greece and Turkey over natural gas and drilling rights in the eastern Mediterranean. Turkey has moved naval forces into Greek territory to secure Turkish drilling rights for natural gas. Greece is using diplomatic pressure to push Turkey out of its territorial waters[…]
Now Israel has joined Egypt in supporting Greece’s claims against Turkey, putting the majority of Eastern Mediterranean nations in Greece’s camp.
Oman and Bahrain may also be going public with their preexisting private diplomatic relations with Israel. This is signaling the formation of a Middle Eastern alliance of countries allied with Israel against an Iranian-Turkish axis that backs the Muslim Brotherhood and various Shiite terror groups.
Turkey, under Erdogan, dreams of restoring its place as the global centre of the Muslim world by de facto resurrecting the Ottoman caliphate. Russia and Iran have sided with it in a “Fertile Crescent axis”
It is now being matched by a coalition from Egypt to Israel to Jordan to the rest of the Middle East[…]We’re witnesses the rise of an Israel-Arab alliance with diplomatic agreement stretching beyond trade to actually containing a growing threat from Turkey, Syria and Iran.
This is, to quote presidential candidate Joe Biden, a big fucking deal.
Don’t bother asking the American mainstream media to cover it, though. They’re too busy cheering on mobs of violent leftist thugs running riot in America’s cities.
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