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Why Israel's First Peace Agreement in Decades Is with the Emirates

(Mosaic) Ed Husain - The UAE-Israel peace treaty is a blueprint for what is yet to come with the other moderate Sunni Arab nations, and beyond. We are in the midst of an existential shift in the global Muslim mind. In the last few years, the Emirati leadership slowly started to dismantle its suspicions of Jews and Israel, by, for instance, sponsoring and publicizing interactions between rabbis and imams, and by speaking openly about the common Abrahamic heritage of Jews and Muslims, as well as Christians. From these first steps came last week's long stride toward a new, peaceful order in the Middle East. In the newly built Abrahamic Family House in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the Emirates, a mosque, church, and synagogue are located inside a single shared compound. The message sent by this symbol is that it is time to turn away from fighting the religious wars of the past. For enlightened Muslims, Jews are not our enemy. We are brothers. Hamas or Hizbullah cannot win anything for ordinary Palestinians. The Emirati diplomacy of direct conversations with the Israelis, far from closing off the idea of a Palestinian state, has provided the Palestinians with their last hope for one. The writer, a British Muslim, is a doctoral researcher at the University of Buckingham.
2020-08-20 00:00:00
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