(Washington Post) Karen DeYoung - The Abraham Accords normalized relations between Israel and three Arab states, with more said to be ready to sign on. The accords symbolize "how the Palestinian cause has fallen in terms of Arab leaders' perceptions of what's important to them," said Jeffrey Feltman, a former senior Middle East official at the State Department. "We all knew that the Arab leaders were fatigued with the Palestinians. They are much more concerned with Iran than with the Israelis." No previous White House had been willing to bypass Palestinian resistance and decades of international and U.S. support for a Palestinian state to offer a deal directly to the Arabs, said Dore Gold, a former Israeli diplomat who in 2015 launched his country's first formal presence in the UAE, a small office within a UN energy agency. Gold views the growing nexus of connections between Israel and the Arab states as a kind of "Middle Eastern NATO," an alliance of countries that eventually could counter Iran.
2020-11-02 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive