OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of
Israel presents himself as a global leader who is in a different league than
his rivals — one who can keep Israel safe and promote its interests on the
world stage. But strains in his relations with two important Arab allies,
Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, have dented that image in the fraught
run-up to Israel’s do-over election.
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Even though Israel and Jordan have had diplomatic relations
for decades, they recently took a turn for the worse. And the Israeli leader’s
efforts to capitalize on his new partnership with the United Arab Emirates
before the close-fought election Tuesday have injected a sour note into the
budding relationship between the two countries.
Senior Emirati officials sent clear signals over the past
week that the Arab Gulf country would not be drawn into Netanyahu’s campaign
for reelection, a rebuke that dented his much-vaunted foreign policy
credentials.
Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving prime minister, has
always portrayed himself as the only candidate who can protect Israel’s
security and ensure its survival in what has mostly been a hostile region. He
has touted peaceful relations with moderate Arab states, including Jordan and
the Emirates, as crucial to defending Israel’s borders and as a buttress
against Iranian ambitions in the region.
But the tensions with Jordan and the UAE undermine
Netanyahu’s attempts to present himself as a Middle East peacemaker as part of
his bid to remain in power while on trial on corruption charges.
The first signs of trouble came after plans for Netanyahu’s
first open visit to the UAE were canceled. Israel and the United Arab Emirates
reached a landmark agreement last August to normalize their relations, the
first step in a broader regional process that came to be known as the Abraham
Accords and that was a signature foreign policy achievement of the Trump
administration.
Netanyahu was supposed to fly to the Emirates’ capital, Abu
Dhabi, on March 11 for a whirlwind meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Zayed, the country’s de facto ruler. But the plan went awry amid a separate
diplomatic spat with Jordan, one of the first Arab countries to sign a peace
treaty with Israel in 1994.
The day before the scheduled trip, a rare visit by HRH Crown
Prince Hussein to Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem — one of Islam’s holiest sites —
was scuttled because of a disagreement between Jordan and Israel over security
arrangements.
That led Jordan, which borders Israel, to delay granting
permission for the departure of a private jet that was waiting there to take
Netanyahu to the Emirates. By the time permission came through, it was too late
and Netanyahu had to cancel the trip.
Netanyahu said later that day that the visit had been put
off “due to misunderstandings and difficulties in coordinating our flights”
that stemmed from the disagreement with Jordan. He said that he had spoken with
the “great leader of the UAE” and that the visit would be rescheduled very
soon.
Netanyahu told Israel’s Army Radio last week that his visit
to Abu Dhabi had been postponed several times over the past few months “due to
the lockdowns and other reasons.”
But he made things worse by publicly boasting after his call
with Prince Mohammed that the UAE intended to invest “the vast sum of $10
billion” in various projects in Israel.
“It became clear to Prince Mohammed that Netanyahu was just
using him for electoral purposes,” said Martin S. Indyk, a distinguished fellow
at the Council on Foreign Relations who was formerly a special envoy for
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
The Emiratis threw aside their usual discretion and made no
secret of their displeasure.
“From the UAE’s perspective, the purpose of the Abrahamic
Accords is to provide a robust strategic foundation to foster peace and
prosperity with the State of Israel and in the wider region,” Anwar Gargash,
who served until last month as the UAE’s minister of state for foreign affairs
and who is now an adviser to the country’s president, wrote on Twitter.
“The UAE will not be a part in any internal electioneering
in Israel, now or ever,” he added.
Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the Emirati minister of industry and
advanced technology, told The Nation, a UAE newspaper, last week that the
Emiratis were still examining investment prospects but that they would be
“commercially driven and not politically associated.” The country is “at a very
early stage in studying the laws and policies in Israel,” he said.
Netanyahu’s aborted push to visit the Emirates before the
Israeli election Tuesday also upended a plan for the Arab country to host an
Abraham Accords summit meeting in April, according to an individual who had
been briefed on the details of the episode.
That gathering would have assembled Netanyahu, leaders of
the UAE and of Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan — the other countries with which
Israel signed normalization deals in recent months — and US Secretary of State
Antony J. Blinken.
Indyk described Netanyahu’s relationships with Prince
Mohammed of the UAE “broken” and in need of mending.
In the first heady months after the deal between Israel and
the UAE, Israeli tech executives and tourists flooded into Dubai, one of the
seven Emirates that make up the country, despite pandemic restrictions. Now,
analysts said, the honeymoon is over even though there has been no indication
the normalization deal is in danger of collapse.
The relationship is essentially “on hold,” said Oded Eran, a
senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel
Aviv and a former Israeli ambassador to the European Union and Jordan.
Beyond Netanyahu’s electioneering, Eran said, the Emiratis
were upset because as part of the normalization deal, Israel dropped its opposition
to the Emiratis’ buying F-35 fighter jets and other advanced weaponry from the
United States, but that transaction is now stalled and under review by the
Biden administration.
In addition, he said, the Emirati leaders were concerned
about what might happen after the election in Israel. Netanyahu has said his
goal is to form a right-wing coalition with parties that put a priority on
annexing West Bank territory in one way or another.
“They are not canceling the deal, but they don’t want more
at this point,” Eran said of the Emiratis. “They want to see what the agenda of
the new government will be.”
Netanyahu’s political opponents have seized upon the
diplomatic debacle.
“Unfortunately, Netanyahu’s conduct in recent years has done
significant damage to our relations with Jordan, causing Israel to lose
considerable defensive, diplomatic and economic assets,” said Benny Gantz, the
Israeli defense minister and a centrist political rival.
“I will personally work alongside the entire Israeli defense
establishment to continue strengthening our relationship with Jordan,” he
added, “while also deepening ties with other countries in the region.”
Netanyahu has said that four more countries were waiting to
sign normalization agreements with Israel, without specifying which ones.
