By Alexander J. Apfel
The “normalization” of ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is an historic step about which Israelis can rejoice. Jerusalem is forging relations with countries that not long ago vowed to never recognize the Jewish state. The benefits accompanying this “Normalization” should be celebrated by all peace-loving people. It is Israel’s hope that one by one, other Arab countries will follow this courageous, albeit overdue, path of peace.
However, in the process of pursuing Normalization with the UAE, Prime Minister Netanyahu all but formally relinquished Israel’s sovereignty to the United States. Hailing the historic breakthrough, Netanyahu assured his base in a press conference on Thursday that he remained committed to applying sovereignty, as he had repeatedly pledged during his last three election campaigns.
Many Israelis believed Netanyahu's election promise and that he had just the man in the White House to give the green light. Yet, after Jordan protested and threatened diplomatic consequences and with Netanyahu’s characteristic flip-flopping, the July 1st date for commencing the process came and went, without progress or event.
Fast Forward a month, and here we are once again, with Netanyahu bowing to the demands of the UAE and the US that we surrender our right to extend sovereignty to areas he has stated belong to the Jewish state. In a press conference immediately following the announcement of the UAE deal, Netanyahu outlined the benefits of such Normalization. These mutual benefits - particularly that Israel has now enlisted a strategic, overt ally against Iran - justify the “temporary” delay on sovereignty, he said.
But rather than accepting the demand to halt sovereignty as a precondition for signing this pact, Netanyahu should have turned the tables and insisted that Israel will sign the pact on condition that the UAE recognizes Israel’s application of sovereignty over certain territories; or, failing that, that the UAE does not openly oppose the Israeli step? Why must Israel, whose cooperation is so highly coveted by the UAE in the fight against Iran and in many other areas, repeatedly yield to demands from others, particularly as those demands pertain to Israeli land?
Such a predisposition is not tenable for a sovereign state. It plays into a decades-old fiction that Israel does not have the right to determine its own destiny unless “we, the world” say it does. This has essentially been the case since 1947 and it appears to be a symptom of the Galut (Jewish diaspora) mentality that has bled into the modern Israeli psyche.
In our pursuit of acceptance among the nations, we submit to their dictates. It's time for Israel to fully shed its Galut skin.
Netanyahu’s deference to Washington on almost all military and territorial matter of strategic, historic and biblical import, constitutes a near total abandonment of the principles upon which this country was founded - that no longer would the Jewish people be bound by the whims of any nation, that they alone would be the architects of their own destiny.
Before blindly embracing this Normalization pact with the UAE, therefore, Israel must ask itself some fundamental questions: Are we a sovereign state or are we a client state of the United States? Is our capital in Washington or Jerusalem? Do we follow the decisions of the democratically elected Knesset or do we obey those sent from Capitol Hill? Are we really an “Am Hofshi (free people)” or are we simply an “Am Americai - An American people”? And what are the implications of those questions in a rapidly changing America?
Israelis must ask themselves the very question that Netanyahu himself asked during a 2012 speech about neutralizing the Iranian threat: “The world tells Israel, ‘wait. There’s still time.’ And I say, wait for what? Wait until when?”?
As a sovereign Jewish state, we should have applied sovereignty. If doing so had resulted in the scuttling of a deal with the UAE, so be it. A country that is unable to determine its own borders without foreign consent is no country at all. It is little more than a colony.
An ever-closer relationship between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump is no reason for Israelis to feel any less of the bitter disappointment they carry as a result of Netanyahu’s repeated, broken promises. Netanyahu surely has not forgotten that the end of the Trump era is approaching and a sea of new challenges under an unknown administration awaits - whether in November, 2020 or four years hence.
Delaying the application of sovereignty has rendered us an autonomous enclave in the Middle East, rather than a sovereign power. Put simply, Normalization with arab countries must never be conditioned upon the perennial denormalization of our own identity and territorial integrity.
On sovereignty, Netanyahu has failed to seize the opportunity he was afforded by history.
He would do well to reflect on what was arguably his finest hour.
Sitting in the Oval Office, in the face of inordinate pressure from an American president, the Israeli Prime Minister invoked history. As he pushed back against the policies of Barack Obama on Judea and Samaria, Prime Minister Netanyahu expressed that if we were to misstep, “history will not give the Jewish people another chance."
On sovereignty, that same Israeli Prime Minister has misstepped. History is unlikely to bestow another chance upon the Jewish people.
Alexander J. Apfel earned a BA and MA in Modern History. He is the former managing editor of Ynetnews and served in the Armoured Corps of the IDF, where he continues to serve as a reservist.