With the recent spate of peace treaties between Arab states and the Jewish one, writes Dan Schueftan, it is clear that the decades-long struggle is “fading away.” He explains:
What is new is Israel’s success, aided by the Arabs’ structural weaknesses, in breaking the pan-Arab front against it, and in convincing the majority of the Arab countries to . . . acknowledge in their policy that a strong Israel is an essential condition for their survival, not a threat to rally round. Violence and instability in the region remain as they were, but the axis of struggle is not between Israel and “the Arabs”; it is between an Arab-Israeli coalition on the one hand, and Iran’s Islamic Revolution and Erdogan’s Turkey (and the Salafi-jihadist threat) on the other. The former to a large extent overlaps with the de -facto coalition of Israel and a majority of the Arab countries against the Muslim Brotherhood.
The prevailing idea in Europe, and of former President Obama, that “the Middle East conflict” revolves around the struggle between Israel and the Palestinians, supported by “the Arab world,” was always misguided, simplistic, and ideologically (as opposed to analytically) driven, but it is now proven to be unfounded and untenable. The most recent conflict with the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip (Operation Guardian of the Walls in May 2021) confirmed this assessment. Following the operation, relations between Israel and the major Arab countries that are part of this coalition, primarily Egypt, became closer, and the overt and covert partnership between them deepened. These countries fear that a Hamas achievement is apt to encourage the Muslim Brotherhood in their territory and threaten their regimes
To elucidate his argument, Schueftan presents a brief and eye-opening history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, an explanation of how the Arab Spring helped bring it to an end, and an evaluation of the current state of the Middle East.
Read more at Strategic Assessment
More about: Abraham Accords, Israel-Arab relations, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Middle East