The back-to-back agreements between the three countries reportedly involve opening embassies and increasing trade between them. The exact terms of the accords were not made public before the signing ceremony.
"I stand here today to extend a hand of peace and receive a hand of peace," said Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the United Arab Emirates' minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation. With the new agreement, he said, "we are already witnessing a change in the heart of the Middle East — a change that will send hope around the world."
Also speaking was Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani, who called it a historic step toward a lasting peace. "For too long, the Middle East has been set back by conflict and mistrust, causing untold destruction and thwarting the potential of generations of our best and brightest young people," he said. "Now I'm convinced we have the opportunity to change that."
"The blessings of the peace we make today will be enormous," Netanyahu said. "First, because this peace will eventually expand to include other Arab states and, ultimately, it can end the Arab-Israeli conflict once and for all; second, because the great economic benefits of our partnership will be felt throughout our region; ... and third, because this is not only a peace between leaders — it's a peace between peoples. Israelis, Emiratis and Bahrainis are already embracing one another."
Bahrain and the UAE, tiny but oil-rich monarchies, bring to four the number of Arab states that have formal ties with Israel. (The others are Egypt and Jordan, since 1979 and 1994, respectively.) But the accord also holds the promise of more to come. After welcoming the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, earlier on Tuesday, Trump said “five or six” other countries were close to making similar deals with Israel, but did not name them. “I think Israel is not isolated anymore,” he said.
The USE and Bahrain’s decisions to normalise relations with Israel follows a history of peace efforts between Israel, the Palestinians and their Arab allies that have failed to overcome decades of distrust and violence.
While the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty broke the Arab taboo on signing an accord with the Jewish state, that treaty did not bring about the promised normalisation of relations, i.e., free movement of goods and people between states. Nor did the 1994 Jordan-Israel peace treaty.
Forty-three years ago this November, Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat stunned the world by arriving in Jerusalem for peace talks with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. The leader of the most populous Arab state had broken the taboo. The Camp David Accords led to the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in 1979 and the restoration to Egypt of the whole Sinai Peninsula, lost in the 1967 war to Israel.
After fighting five times in less than thirty years, the two regional powers in the Middle East – Egypt and Israel – had, with the help of U.S. mediation, finally made peace. Sadat praised Carter as “the man who performed the miracle. This was the first recognition of Israel as a state by a major Arab country and with Egypt being the largest Arab state, the Camp David Accords ended the possibility of an Arab military defeat of Israel. Egypt also became one of the largest recipients of US aid.
The talks probably stand as the most successful negotiations in the whole peace process. The treaty has lasted, and it substantially strengthened Israel's position. However, the peace between Egypt and Israel has not been warm. The treaty infuriated Arab countries who claimed it neutralized Egypt and undercut their unity. Egypt was promptly suspended from the Arab League, which moved its headquarters from Cairo to Tunis; most Arab countries recalled their ambassadors and cut diplomatic relations. In 1981, President Sadat was himself assassinated by Islamist revolutionaries opposed to the deal.
Israel and Egypt today maintain a “cold peace” — official diplomatic relations and security cooperation amid Egyptian public hostility towards Israel. For the nearly four decades since, the two countries have exchanged ambassadors and coordinated on security and borders, but full “normalization” never occurred. While Israeli tourism in Egypt has surged during periods of calm, Egyptian tourists have only trickled into Israel. Cultural exchanges are also extremely limited; Egyptian artists and academics have boycotted Israel. Nevertheless, their treaty has withstood decades of conflicts that drew in regional players, including Lebanon (1982 and 2006), Palestinian uprisings (1987 and 2000) and failed peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.
In 1993, Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat and Bill Clinton shook hands at the South Lawn of the White House in front of Bill Clinton at the signing of the Oslo Accords, which the Palestinians negotiated without any other Arab state’s involvement. The Oslo Accords prompted Jordan to accelerate its negotiations with Israel and the two countries signed the Wadi Araba Accord in the Jordan Valley in 1994 with Clinton as the witness, formally ending decades of war between the two neighbours. All three gave speeches, but the king’s address got the most attention. His speech included a clear and unqualified statement that the state of war was over. He spoke of the realisation of peace as the fulfillment of his life-long dream.
The peace treaty established diplomatic relations, opened the way for significant economic ties and joint infrastructure projects, and codified – and expanded greatly – a cooperative security regime that had existed for many years. Significantly, it also enshrined the “special role” status of Jordan in the Temple Mount Compound (al-Haram al-Sharif) through the agency of the Waqf – thus securing for the Hashemites (once the custodians of Mecca and Medina) a unique position in the world of Islam.
However, over twenty-five years later, the relationship is still characterised in some respects as a “cold peace”, and despite progress on some issues (such as energy supply), the situation is worse than when it was established. There is a great deal of disappointment and disillusionment on both sides with the scarcely visible “fruits of peace”.
In contrast, the agreements between the UAE, Bahrain and Israel promise to be the first Arab-Israel "warm" peace which will lead to —a “peace between peoples” rather than merely governments.
On Sunday, Netanyahu told cabinet ministers: “We now have two historic peace agreements with two Arab countries within one month. I am sure that we all praise this new age... I want to promise you that each and every one of you through your ministries will be a part of it, because this is going to be a different peace. “It will be a warm peace, an economic peace in addition to a diplomatic peace; a peace between nations.”
The United Arab Emirate’s minister of state for foreign affairs said on Thursday that his country’s new peace with Israel would be “warm,” but that its embassy will be in Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem.
In an interview with the Times of Israel, Hend Al Otaiba, the director of strategic communications at the Emirati Foreign Ministry, described at some length why her country is “enthusiastic” about the peace treaty with the Jewish state, citing the UAE’s commitment to religious pluralism and regional cooperation against mutual threats.
“The Emirati people feel enthusiastic about the establishment of relations with Israel,” she said.
“Levels of excitement are particularly high among younger generations — this historic move is a reflection of our country’s forward-thinking leadership and future-oriented vision for the region, and it is the youth of this region who will reap the greatest share of the economic, cultural, and scientific rewards that this cooperation will usher in over time.”
