The Bahrain-Israel deal is significant because the kingdom is a virtual protectorate of the Saudis. There are serious concerns that a Saudi involvement with Israel will only lead to further tightening of measures against the Palestinian cause. And Iran will rise in prestige in Palestinian global affairs.

Trump’s Bahrain-Israel pact is a power politics move and has been embraced by Israel lobby groups, Democratic reps, and the NYT, all of which bash Palestinians. But in fact it only advances the one-state struggle for democracy inside Israel and Palestine.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz says Trump “blindsided” and “endanger”-ed Israel by agreeing to give the UAE F-35s in its deal with Israel. So Biden is running to Trump’s right on Israel to win FL, where older Jewish voters are surely pleased by Trump’s doing whatever Israel has wanted.

Next week, Donald Trump will host a ceremonial signing of the Israel-United Arab Emirates deal to normalize relations between the two countries. The deal has been condemned by many for failing to secure even a single concession for Palestinians. But shortly after the deal was announced, another downside — and perhaps the U.S.’s primary motivation for pursuing the deal — came sharply into focus: tens of billions of dollars in UAE weapons sales.

Michael Koplow, an Israel promoter, sees a philosophical distinction between two Zionist concepts, Barak’s villa in the jungle, and Jabotinsky’s iron wall. But both are colonialist conceits about the surrounding non-Jewish societies, and there is no significant difference between them.

The UAE deal with Israel under which it gets F-35s from the US may set off bids from other Arab countries for U.S. favor. “Each one has their own pet project, what they would get for normalizing,” says Nimrod Novik. Morocco wants its occupation of Western Sahara accepted. Sudan wants off the U.S. terror list.

The first commercial Israeli flight from Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi took off Monday morning, signifying the latest step in Israeli-UAE normalization efforts. Jared Kushner said the flight meant, “peace and prosperity are possible in this region,” but for Palestinians, it signified the opposite. Instead, it serves as a reminder of the “betrayal” of their cause by the UAE, and their painful history since the Nakba.

In 2019 James Zogby polled the Arab World on normalizing relations with Israel, “Shooting the messenger might make you feel good, but by ignoring information we don’t like we run the risk of making a bad situation worse.”

Tom Friedman behaved exactly like the Israel lobby’s flagship organization, AIPAC, which similarly issued no warnings against annexation, but jumped immediately to endorse the UAE-Israel agreement.