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Some Arab Leaders Don't Want to Be Held Back by Palestinian Rejectionism
(New Yorker) Robin Wright - After decades of dominating and defining tensions across the Middle East, the Palestinians are no longer a pressing priority; they also seem increasingly irrelevant to the region's trendlines. Their brethren are abandoning them. "The conflict is decidedly less important to leaders in the region," Natan Sachs, the director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, told me. The agreement is "a visible demonstration of the fatigue of some Arab leaders, in the UAE and Saudi Arabia in particular, with the Palestinian leadership and their cause. They no longer want to be held back by what they see as Palestinian rejectionism." The Palestinians have to sort out their own political mess before the Arab world will again expend much political clout to help their cause. Israel's deal with the UAE alters a fundamental premise of peace, Sachs noted. For decades, the framework of international diplomacy was based on "land for peace" in exchange for the Arabs promising no future aggression. The new premise is "peace for peace."