Climate of Judeo-Arab civil war, shelling of Gaza, rocket fire from Hamas to the Galilee: the “New Middle East”, supposed to arise from normalization agreements concluded last year between the Hebrew state and several Arab countries, has never looked so much like the old one. The return to the forefront of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict puts at odds those states which, without saying so, had bet on the erasure of this question, or at least its definitive relegation, to the bottom of the diplomatic agenda. -media.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, which one after another recognized Israel, between August and December 2020, at the instigation of the administration of Donald Trump, then graduating, must now engage in a delicate balancing act: on the one hand, the strategic dividends that this decision, which was heavily paid for in Washington, offered them and which they do not want to ruin; on the other, the growing emotion of their population, largely committed to the Palestinian cause, which they cannot completely ignore.
The UAE, the third Arab country to take the step of normalization, after Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994, should not have too much difficulty in closing this big gap. The cyber-authoritarianism in force in this petromonarchy leaves no room for protest to the nine million inhabitants, who are 90% foreign migrants. Very little politicized by nature, an effect of the oil rent which ensures them a very comfortable standard of living, the Emiratis are hardly used, anyway, to question the choices of their leaders.
A symbol that does not leave indifferent
Still, in this federation of seven principalities, as in the entire Arab-Muslim world, Jerusalem is a symbol that does not leave you indifferent. On Saturday May 8, as the Israeli repression in the eastern part of the holy city intensified, a prelude to the all-out conflagration we are witnessing today, authorities in Abu Dhabi issued a relatively firm and substantiated statement. .
The text condemned “The assault” against the Al-Aqsa Mosque, whose worshipers were dislodged with tear gas canisters, the “displacement” of families from Sheikh Jarrah, a Palestinian neighborhood prey to the greed of Jewish settlers, and “Reached” to the status of Jordan, traditional guardian of the Muslim holy places of Jerusalem. The statement called on Israel to “Maximum restraint to prevent the region from drifting towards a new level of instability”. The Kingdom of Bahrain was also moved, in a shorter text, by the “Attacks” and ” Provocation “ Israeli, “Which violate international law and undermine the chances of reviving the peace process”.
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