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Israel's Vulnerable New Friends

(martinkramer.org) Martin Kramer - The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain are vulnerable and dangerously close to Iran. The UAE has a population of 9.8 million, only slightly larger than Israel's. But Arab citizens form only 12% - around a million-plus. The rest are migrants who've come to work. Bahrain is a smaller-scale version of the same dynamic. The population is 1.7 million, of whom less than half are Bahraini citizens. Both countries look stable, but demography is an abiding concern. The combined citizen populations of the UAE and Bahrain probably don't come to two million. The rulers are perfectly aware of their vulnerability, so they have perfected survival strategies that work amazingly well. The most important is to secure and keep the support of the West, and especially the U.S., as a counterweight to the forces of envy that surround them. The UAE, in particular, has embraced a degree of cultural and religious tolerance that has impressed the West. The real attraction of normalization for the UAE and Bahrain is that good relations with Israel are the default of all enlightened Western countries. Full and normal relations with Israel raise the UAE and Bahrain to a new category: from "friendly Arab countries that sell us oil" to "best Arab friends of our own best friend, Israel." It's an upgrade, and it's become a need-to-have in a time of American retrenchment. The writer, founding president of Shalem College in Jerusalem, is also a fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
2020-09-21 00:00:00
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