Barry Rubin *
This article considers prospects for developing relations between Israel and the Persian Gulf monarchies: Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. A central feature of U.S. Middle East policy--and one doomed to fail--is an effort to urge Gulf countries to take steps toward peace or confidence-building measures with Israel. Israel has a strong interest to seek normal relations with these countries, as each state moving toward peace further tips the regional balance, making it harder for other countries and movements to attack Israel, obtain funds for arms and terrorism, or subvert the peace process. Israel can also make important (though more modest than many expect) commercial gains by trade with these wealthy countries, while there are certain products they could obtain that would benefit their economies. Yet all of these Gulf countries have very strong reasons that make them unlikely to move toward peace, normalization of relations, or confidence-building measures.
In early August 2009, Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faysal visited Washington. He praised the Obama administration and then hammered nails into the coffin of its Middle East policy. There was nothing subtle about the Saudi response.
For the first time, a non-radical Arab regime--that is, one nominally allied with the United States--has openly ridiculed the U.S. government’s new policy. Naturally, the prince was full of praise for the Obama administration, in general. In specific, he did the opposite, stating: "Today, Israel is trying to distract by shifting attention from the core issue--an end to the occupation that began in 1967 and the establishment of a Palestinian state--to incidental issues such as academic concerns and civil aviation methods. This is not the way to peace."
Yet these weren’t Israeli ideas; this was the American plan presented by the Obama administration itself. It was a clear sign that the Saudis and other Gulf Arabs would not help the U.S. plan of launching major progress in the peace process by getting a freeze on Israeli construction of apartments in West Bank settlements in exchange for Arab state confidence-building measures.
The Obama Administration’s effort to launch a renewed push for Arab-Israeli peace through confidence-building measures raises the issue of Israel-Gulf relations and possible progress on that front. Could this be a front where something could be done to advance the peace process on a regional level?
After a strenuous effort, the U.S. government was able to come up only with the following: a reported offer by Oman and Qatar to reopen Israel’s trade office in their countries, and a somewhat ambiguous op-ed by a UAE official in the Washington Post.[1]
Certainly, the prospects for any change do not look encouraging, and yet if Gulf Arab states wanted to change the situation they could easily do so. This article considers prospects for developing relations between Israel and the Persian Gulf monarchies: Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. Each country has different issues, political balances, material incentives, and constraints.
For its part, Israel has a strong interest to seek normal relations with these countries. Each state moving toward peace further tips the regional balance, making it harder for other countries and movements to attack Israel, obtain funds for arms and terrorism, or subvert the peace process. Israel can also make important (though more modest than many expect) commercial gains by trade with these wealthy countries, while there are certain products they could obtain that would benefit their economies.[2]
Of course while there are overwhelming factors against doing so, some reasons could be cited as to why Gulf Arab monarchies might consider building bridges to Israel:
--Hope for profitable trade.
--To gain additional security against the perceived Iranian threat.[3]
--To enhance regional stability and keep the Israel and Palestinian issues from being used by radicals to subvert their own regimes.
--For some, showing their independence from Saudi Arabian control. To some extent, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain view the Saudis or Kuwaitis as arrogant and over-privileged, but the UAE and Bahrain are less willing to risk friction with Riyadh.[4]
--Enhancing their relations with the United States.
These factors were seen in the 1991 Madrid conference, their support for the Saudi-initiated Arab peace plan, and also by the attendance of five of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states (Kuwait was the exception) at an August 1999 U.S.-hosted meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy. An Egyptian writer summarized these points as follows: "The Arab world is no longer as committed to the Palestinian cause as it was.... Arab regimes no longer consider defending that cause vital for their credibility with their own masses; and... they want the issue solved... so that they can become part of the new globalized world order...."[5]
Qatar and Oman have been most active in considering opportunities to move forward again regarding relations with Israel. They did not surrender to Egyptian, Saudi, and Syrian pressure to move slowly when the peace process was advancing during the 1993-1996 era, and only gave in when the process was frozen by an Arab League decision. Even then, they tried to continue contacts behind the scenes.
There are also, though, serious factors deterring GCC states from moving toward relations with Israel:
--Criticizing, or at least keeping distance from, Israel is an easy way to show one's Arab credentials and appease radicals, both domestic and foreign. To cite one symbolic example from the 1990s, the UAE-led threatened boycott against Disney over an Israeli exhibition on Jerusalem seemed largely a publicity stunt to show they had not forgotten the Palestinian issue completely. It is also revealing that the Saudis backed a compromise since some of their princes were big stockholders in the Disney company.
There is, of course, strong emotional support for the Palestinian cause alongside little interest in helping the Palestinians directly. Gulf Arab states are also angry at PLO backing for...
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*
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Centerand editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict, and Crisis (Palgrave Macmillan), Conflict and Insurgency in the Contemporary Middle East (Routledge),The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition) (Viking-Penguin), the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan), A Chronological History of Terrorism (Sharpe), and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East
(Wiley).
NOTES
[1] Shaikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, “Arabs Need to Talk to the Israelis,” Washington Post, July 16, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/16/AR2009071602737.html.
[2] A superb source of information on doing business in these countries are the Country Reports on Economic Policy and Trade Practices published by the U.S. State Department. The reports include a detailed breakdown, for example, of all current major commercial projects, government contacts, and local regulations.
[3] Publicly, Gulf regimes--especially the Saudis--talk about an "Israeli threat" to the region, but this seems more demagoguery aimed at the public than a serious expectation.
[4] Saudi influence can be described as high in Kuwait and Bahrain; medium in the UAE; and low in Qatar and Oman.
[5] Muhammad Sid-Ahmed in al-Ahram Weekly, September 23-29, 1999.
MERIA Journal Staff
Publisher and Editor: Prof. Barry Rubin
Assistant Editors: Yeru Aharoni, Anna Melman.
MERIA is a project of the Global Research in International Affairs
(GLORIA) Center, Interdisciplinary University.
Site: http://www.gloria-center.org/ - Email: info@gloria-center.org
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