By Jeremiah Rozman

With strong U.S. backing, on August 13, 2020, Israel and the UAE agreed to normalize relations. The UAE is the third Arab country to do so since Israel’s founding. 

In exchange for full normalization, Israel agreed to suspend extending sovereignty to disputed areas. As a supporter of sovereignty, especially in the strategically critical Jordan Valley, I view this agreement with tempered optimism. It supports the strategic interests of the U.S., U.S. partners in the Middle East and Israel. It does not harm Israel’s de-facto defensive position and should encourage the Palestinians to negotiate. Following an extensive election campaign, which heavily featured the promise to extend sovereignty, this deal has mixed results for Israel’s domestic politics. 

Great Power Competition

The Israel-UAE peace agreement was at least as much about U.S. strategic interests as it was about Israel and the UAE. Washington’s strategic priority is great power competition. Its top adversaries are Russia and China. Its main advantage is its alliance network. By solidifying the start of a coherent alignment between itself, Israel, and regional partners, the U.S. can lead a united front against Iran while preempting Russian and Chinese encroachment on its traditional allies. Furthermore, European partners often clash with the U.S. over Israel. This agreement has been warmly welcomed by the Europeans, helping to smooth over some of these differences.

Regional Security and Prosperity

The main benefit of this agreement is not ending violence, as was the case with Egypt. Rather, it is the setting of a diplomatic precedent intended to open a new regional realignment and an era of cooperation. 

Forward thinking Arab leaders realize that oil does not hold the promise for prolonged prosperity that it did fifty years ago. Their countries need access to state of the art technology and expertise in order to build economies and militaries primed for success in the information age. The U.S. and Israel can offer much needed investment, expertise, and defense support. Normalization with Israel opens the door for multilateral cooperation to modernize regional economies and enhance collective defense with an eye focused towards restraining Iran. 

Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign credited the Israel-UAE breakthrough as the culmination of “efforts of multiple administrations.” Perhaps this assertion alludes to President Obama’s Iran deal, which caused regional powers to seek cooperation with Israel out of fear of Iran. This agreement, as a starting point for regional cooperation, will greatly boost Israel’s ability to target Iran should the need arise. 

Israel and the Gulf countries fear that if Joe Biden were to win the upcoming U.S. presidential elections, and follow through on his platform’s pledge to reenter the JCPOA, ending the maximum pressure strategy against Iran, the need to kinetically target Iran’s nuclear program could very well arise. For Israel to carry out a successful attack, it needs good relations with partners, the use of airspace, staging grounds, refueling capabilities, intelligence sharing, and diplomatic support. By simply boosting the credibility of the threat to strike Iran, the peace deal enhances deterrence against Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. 

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

By forestalling sovereignty and securing increased visitation to the al Aqsa Mosque, this agreement gives the UAE a concrete policy win for the Palestinian cause. This boosts its leadership clout and contrasts the advantages of diplomacy with the Hezbollah/Lebanon confrontational model which has secured nothing for the Palestinians and brought ruin to Lebanon. 

For Israel, the main strategic drawback of the agreement is postponing de jure sovereignty, which is the optimal way to ensure Israeli control over the Jordan Valley for posterity. In the near term, this changes nothing, though. Israel has maintained security control over the Jordan Valley for over five decades and can continue, now with the tacit support of Arab powers, until an adequate deal is presented. This would require concrete border commitments from the Palestinian Authority (PA). Due to their ideological opposition, this is unlikely to be obtained.  

Over the coming years, the UAE will inevitably see substantial economic and defense benefits from normalization with Israel, making the treaty ever more difficult to abrogate. If the PA remains unwilling to negotiate peace, it is unlikely that the UAE will withdraw from the agreement if Israel extends sovereignty to the Jordan Valley. At that point, Israel could extend sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and other areas in the disputed territories without substantively harming relations with its Arab partners. Both Prime Minister Netanyahu and Jared Kushner have signaled that this is on the table. Whether it is implemented depends mostly upon the actions of the PA. 

Israel’s Domestic Politics

For Israel’s domestic politics, the peace agreement will have mixed results. It will exacerbate trust issues between the electorate and the Likud. Netanyahu campaigned on the promise of sovereignty, which was strongly supported by his voters. Some might credit him with masterful “door in the face” negotiating, waiving the credible threat of sovereignty in order to secure a diplomatic win by then conceding on it. Others will see this as a bait and switch. Either way, it exemplifies foreign policy from on high, keeping the masses in the dark so that the “experts” can play geopolitical chess. While this may or may not be desirable, it is likely to erode faith in electoral promises. 

Conclusion

The much heralded Israel-UAE peace agreement has disappointed many proponents of sovereignty. Others see normalized ties without requiring a change to the status quo as a betrayal of the Palestinians. In reality, this is a pragmatic move aimed primarily at boosting the U.S. geostrategic position with an eye towards great power competition. Secondarily, it opens the door for regional alignment between Israel and Gulf countries for economic and military cooperation. It does not harm Israel’s security in the short-term. It does not definitively end sovereignty. It does however, boost Israel’s position vis-à-vis its only existential threat, a nuclear armed Iran. For these reasons, the deal should be viewed with tentative optimism, as a win for Israel, moderate Arab regimes and the democratic global order. 

Jeremiah Rozman currently works as the National Security Analyst at a DC-based think tank. From 2006-2009 he served as an infantryman in the IDF. His regional expertise is in the Middle East and Russia. He designed and taught an undergraduate course on the Arab-Israeli conflict.