International events… the UAE gateway to normalize with Israel
The ruling regime in the United Arab Emirates is involved in normalizing with Israel at the expense of liquidation the Palestinian cause.
After years of covert cooperation, the UAE regime has resorted to international events as a gateway to publicly normalization with Israel and make it a reality despite the wide opposition it faces among Emiratis and Arab peoples.
The latest was the celebration of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s the Israeli official participation in Expo 2020, which will be held in the UAE.
Netanyahu said in a tweet, “Israel’s participation in the Dubai exhibition is another expression of its rising status in the world and the region.”
The Israeli celebration with the UAE normalization coincided with the UAE Minister of Foreign Affairs invitation to the Arabic openness to Israel. “The relations between the Arab states and Israel need to be transformed.” The National, an Abu Dhabi-based Arab newspaper, said that Anwar Gargash said: “the strategic shift, needs actually, for us to progress on the peace front.”
But on the other hand, the Palestinians view the danger of such growing shift in relations between the UAE and Israel, which to a certain extent they called “the arrogance of public normalization with the occupying state.”
“No Palestinian accepts that Arab states open the door to normalization with Israel under the current political circumstances and while the Palestinians remain under occupation,” said Saeb Erekat, secretary of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Executive Committee.
Erekat explained that “the Arab countries must abide by the decision of the Arab League to reject public and even secret normalization with Israel, as this contradicts what was agreed upon in the recent Arab summits that prohibited normalization.”
He pointed out that any Arab country that moves even one step toward the occupation to establish official relations, without a clear political process and the preservation of the Palestinians’ rights, supports the occupation and its terrorism, aggression, racism, displacement and killing of the Palestinians.
According to Erekat, normalization is a free bonus to Israel, a betrayal of the blood of the Palestinians and their sacrifices, which are presented daily in the face of the occupier and address him, pointing out that “Israel” exploits these circumstances to tear the Palestinian issue more widely and more seriously.
“Arab normalization is totally rejected, and any Arab country that takes any step toward the occupying state will be a huge blow to the Palestinians and gives a new life to the occupier,” says Abbas Zaki, a member of the Fatah Central Committee.
” Arabs are required to support the Palestinians and to confront all the malicious Israeli schemes that are being waged against Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque and the entire Palestinian rights, not opening doors for military, political, commercial and even technical relations,” Zaki said.
Nabil Shaath, Advisor to the Palestinian President for Foreign and International Relations, also commented on the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s announcement to participate in Expo 2020, and said in a press statement: “There will be official contact with the UAE on the matter.” He considered that the normalization of any Arab country with Israel constitutes a “grave mistake” in the Palestinian cause and the Arab and Islamic position, adding that this is “contrary to the decision of the Arab foreign ministers in Cairo, and contrary to the Palestinian position.”
“We have asked all Arab countries to stop any normalization with Israel and to abide by the Arab peace initiative, which calls for normalization only after Israel withdraws completely from all the territories it occupied in 1967. Talking about normalization in order to make peace is not true, because the project of Israel, along with the administration of the US President Donald Trump, has nothing to do with peace or the rights of the Palestinian people.”
Two days ago, Israel announced its participation in Expo 2020, which will be launched from October 2020 to April 2021.
Recently, the pace of normalization has increased in various forms between Israelis and Arabs; through Israeli participation in sports and cultural activities by Arab countries, such as the UAE, while close secret relations with Saudi Arabia were reported.
Recently, there have been some meetings between UAE and Israeli officials, and Abu Dhabi and Riyadh have supported the “deal of the century” that US President Donald Trump seeks to implement, which undermines the Palestinian right to the Israeli occupation.
Hamas movement considered the announcement of the participation of an Israeli delegation at the Dubai International Exhibition “a serious development.” Sami Abu Zuhri, the leader of the movement, called on the UAE not to get involved in normalization because it encourages Israeli crimes, a waste of the nation’s rights and a violation of the decisions of the Tunis Summit.
As for this great development between Israel and the UAE in particular, political analyst Abdul Sattar Qassem believes that the UAE has surpassed all Arab countries in their struggle behind Israel and the establishment of official and public relations with them.
He said “Emirati officials are determined that this year 2019 will be the most important year in the history of their relations with Israel, and open all forms of normalization with them, regardless of Arab resolutions or even the Palestinian issue, which lives the most sensitive times.”
He pointed out that the UAE position comes with this audacity only after receiving the green light of Saudi Arabia, considering the visits of Israelis to the Arab countries and receiving them in celebrations and sporting events, cultural and other, the introduction to a more dangerous stage.
He said that what the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and other printing countries are doing is to satisfy Trump, even if it was at the expense of the Palestinians and their cause, which they view as “a major obstacle to their relations with Israel.
Activists from international human rights organizations have launched a website highlighting human rights violations in the UAE for hosting the Expo 2020.
The site was linked in the International Expo website and provides information on human rights violations committed by the UAE, its support for terrorist organizations and its involvement in violations of women’s rights, slavery, money laundering and violations of Yemen’s war and trade in Libya.
