The threat of an ascendant Iran—and especially Washington’s tilt toward Tehran during the Obama administration—undoubtedly pushed the Gulf states toward improving relations with Jerusalem. And normalization agreements have brought Arab nations tangible and immediate benefits: F-35 jets for the United Arab Emirates, recognition of sovereignty over Western Sahara for Morocco, and so forth. But, Haviv Rettig Gur argues, the recent peacemaking isn’t solely transactional; rather a genuine admiration for the Jewish state lies behind it:
[Arms sales and similar inducements] explain why each government might agree to establish full diplomatic ties with Israel. But they don’t explain, for example, the Emirati government’s order that hotels offer kosher food in time for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, or the eagerness of the UAE and Bahrain for direct flights to Tel Aviv, or the decision by one sheikh to buy into Jerusalem’s controversial Beitar soccer club. They don’t explain Morocco’s move in recent weeks to introduce a curriculum about the history and culture of the country’s Jews into state schools.
To answer the question, Gur looks to the deep-seated “Arab-ness in Israeli Jewish culture that goes beyond the love of hummus and expressive Arabic epithets,” but involves “assumptions about family, religion, and social and ethnic identity.” These similarities have led Arabs to pay closer attention to the differences:
What is it about Israel, the most Arab-like people in the West—or perhaps the most Western of Arab-world peoples—that conferred on it its economic and political and military strengths? Jews speak of Israel’s accomplishments with pride, as a way of patting themselves on the back. Some in the Arab world are beginning to speak of those accomplishments, too, but in less sentimental terms. Their interest is diagnostic. What are the Israelis doing right, actually and specifically? And how do we replicate it?
To those now starting to look at Israel beyond the scope of the Arab-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli conflicts, here is a basically conservative, high-birthrate country that has managed to neutralize or even reverse the trends that plague Arab economies and societies, from their young, unemployed populations to their ethnic and religious sectarianism. Israel’s population is young but its unemployment is low—or at least was before the coronavirus pandemic—and its division into bickering sectarian tribes, as this writer and others have argued, is the source and main driver of its democracy.
Read more on Times of Israel: https://www.timesofisrael.com/gulf-normalization-isnt-about-fearing-iran-its-about-embracing-israel/