The intended target of the UAE-Israel alliance is not Iran but Turkey, whose regional clout poses a threat to Gulf rulers.
Months before the announcement that the UAE was going to recognise Israel, breaking the status quo that normalisation would come only after Palestinians achieved statehood, analysts puzzled over US President Donald Trump's "deal of the century".
Why, they asked themselves, is the US president investing so much energy in a deal that Palestinian leaders boycott, that Arab states reject, and that will never work? The announcement by Abu Dhabi did not answer their question.
Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have struggled to get other states in the region to normalise relations with Israel .
So far only Bahrain, Serbia and Kosovo have said they will follow suit. The big, or populous, states have refused, with no buy-in from Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Oman, or Kuwait.
No amount of spin at the White House next week will disguise the fact that Israeli PM Binjamin Netanyahu will be shaking hands with the leaders of only two small Arab states in a ceremony that Trump will dub historic.
Trump blinks first
If Palestinians were never the intended target of this deal, who was? Kushner's aim is a Jewish national religious one; it is to establish Greater Israel as a permanent fact on the ground.
But against whom is the Emirati-Israeli alliance supposed to be defending itself? Israel had been saying for some time to Arab diplomats that it no longer regarded Iran as a military threat. The head of Mossad, Yossi Cohen, told Arab officials that Iran was "containable".
There are foreign actors in this push to declare Turkey the new outlaw of the Eastern Mediterranean
Trump came nose-to-nose with a military confrontation with Iran, and he blinked first.
Iran openly launched a volley of missiles at US troops in Iraq in retaliation for the drone strike that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad in January.
Israeli warplanes have repeatedly tested this theory in Syria and Lebanon, striking Iranian targets and Iranian-backed fighters with impunity, with no response from Tehran and scant response from Hezbollah.
Trump's response was to disband the strike force he had assembled in the Gulf. If Iran is not the target of this fledging alliance, then who is?
The Turks are coming
The answer came this week in a heavily orchestrated series of statements from Arab leaders meeting in the Arab League. The real enemy turns out to be a member of Nato, for many decades a keeper of airborne US nuclear bombs.
The new foreign invader threatening the Arab world is not the Persian, nor indeed the Russian - but the Turk.
As if thrown into action by a communal electric switch, the entire shoreline of the Eastern Mediterranean, from Lebanon to Egypt, is ostensibly up in arms against its northern neighbour with alleged pretensions of restoring Ottoman rule.
The charge has been led by UAE Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash. Speaking at the Arab League, Gargash said: "The Turkish interference in the internal affairs of Arab countries is a clear example of negative interference in the region."
That is quite a statement from a minister of a country that toppled an Egyptian president, and whose planes have bombed Libya's Tripoli in an effort to oust another internationally recognised government.
Gargash accused Turkey of threatening the security and safety of maritime traffic in Mediterranean waters, in a clear violation of relevant international laws and charters and of the sovereignty of states.
Defining the enemy
Gargash was followed by Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, who said that Turkish interventions in many Arab countries represented the most important threat to Arab national security.
"Egypt will not stand idly by in the face of Turkish ambitions that are manifesting in northern Iraq, Syria and Libya in particular," he said.
The meeting was chaired by the Palestinian delegation, which came prepared with an angry draft statement condemning the UAE-Israel agreement as treason.
Their statement was dropped by the council, which decided to set up a permanent subcommittee to monitor Turkish aggression and report back to it at each subsequent meeting.
verder lezen..
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinio...rld-get-ankara
dit is een duidelijk analyse over het opkomende Turkse macht..en dankzij erdogan zal dat zeker komen en hopelijk zal dat het einde van al die arabsiche dictators inluiden.