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The Israel-UAE Agreement: A Message to the Palestinians
(Jerusalem Post) Prof. Eytan Gilboa - The Israel-UAE agreement is extremely important. This is the third peace agreement between Israel and an Arab country after Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994). People across much of the Sunni Muslim Arab world don't perceive Israel anymore as an enemy, but rather as an ally. It will increase the legitimacy of Israel's existence as a Jewish state in the Middle East. The Israel-UAE agreement sends the Palestinians a number of messages: The Palestinians can no longer exercise veto power on relations between Israel and Arab states which strongly share with Israel significant security and economic interests. Blocking the Iran threats is more important than the Palestinian cause. Time is not on the Palestinians' side. The agreement also undermines the Palestinians' strategy of conditioning peace agreements between Israel and Arab countries on an agreement with the Palestinians. The writer is a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University.