Nearly 70 percent of Palestinians say US policy will be the same or worse under a President Biden, and just 21 percent think he will improve matters. A new survey shows widespread rejection of Israel’s normalization deals, 90 percent calling the Gulf States’ recognition “betrayal,” “abandonment,” “insult” or “sadness,” while only 1 percent used words like “joy.”
Forget the normalization efforts of Gulf state oligarchies. As the South African struggle against apartheid showed it is the power of ordinary people that matters.
On Tuesday, Trump held a ceremonial signing to celebrate the normalization of relations between Israel and the UAE, as well as Israel and Bahrain. As usual the Palestinians are on the outside looking in.
At a time when grassroots activists and organizers everywhere are denouncing normalization with Israel, one Palestinian with a very large global social media following is actively promoting it, pandering to the liberal Zionist line of “both sides” being to blame for the violence and loss of life in Palestine.
The deals with the UAE and Bahrain show Israel’s economic power and favor in Washington–and expose its persecution of Palestinians in the name of “the one and only Jewish state,” as Netanyahu describes his country.
Rev. Alex Awad writes, if Israelis wish to live in peace, they would be better served to call on Israeli leaders to practice justice than blame Palestinians.
On Tuesday, September 15, Donald Trump will host a ceremonial signing of deals to normalize relations between Israel and the UAE and Israel and Bahrain. Activists will gather to protest these deals which are not about peace but about furthering Israel’s systems of occupation and apartheid. The protest will be led by a coalition of over 50 Palestinian rights organizations and groups, many of which are led by Palestinian Americans and Arab Americans.
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.
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.”