Lu Nanfeng, Zhuang Muyang
The scheme behind the Abrahamic Agreement
On August 13, U.S. President Donald Trump announced on his Twitter account that Israel and the United Arab Emirates had reached a historic peace agreement, known as the Abraham Accord. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Crown Prince Abu Dhabi and Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the UAE Armed Forces, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, subsequently issued a joint statement confirming this. Under the agreement, Israel suspends its annexation plans for parts of the occupied West Bank, and the UAE will fully normalize relations with Israel. As a result, the UAE became the first Gulf country to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, and the third Arab country to establish diplomatic relations with Israel after Egypt and Jordan.
Egyptian President Al-Sisi, British Prime Minister Johnson and United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres welcomed this, while Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and former Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ashrawi expressed condemnation and refusal, while Saudi officials did not express their position. Under the haze of the global epidemic of COVID-19, the Middle East, which has been plagued by war for decades, has once again ushered in a new change, why did the two countries that were once old enemies suddenly turn into a golden war, and what interests did all parties have to plan? On August 19, Martin Indyk, a former ambassador to Israel and a special envoy for Palestinian-Israeli negotiations and now a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on the Foreign Affairs website that normalized relations between the two countries as "Trump's unexpected diplomacy in the Middle East, analyzing how Trump's botched peace plan led to the Abraham Accords."
Indik argues that the Abraham Accord should be seen as a historic breakthrough in the long history of Arab confrontation with Israel, but this one looks more like the latest in a chain of unintended consequences. When the United States pushes open one door, the other door often does not open. In 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter urged the reconvening of the Geneva Middle East Peace Conference, while Egyptian President Sadat traveled to Jerusalem to avoid it. In 1993, bill Clinton sought an agreement between Israel and Syria, and Yasser Arafat gladly accepted the Oslo Accords (brokered by Norway) for fear of being thrown aside.
On August 13, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech in Jerusalem announcing a peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
This time, Trump gave israel the green light to annex Palestinian territory in the West Bank, but created the conditions for Crown Prince Mohammed to fully normalize relations with Israel.
Over the past 10 years, relations between the UAE and Israel have been quietly developing as they see each other as having a common interest in countering the threat from Iran and Turkey. To compensate for the U.S. shrinking in the region, Crown Prince Mohammed further sought a strategic alliance with Israel. In doing so, he recognized the value of normalizing relations with Israel and in 2015 welcomed Israel's diplomatic mission to the International Renewable Energy Agency in Abu Dhabi and invited Israel to expo Dubai (now postponed until 2021). But there are strict limits to such cooperation, as made clear in the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative: Arab states that are not directly involved in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will normalize relations with Israel only after the demands for independent Palestinian statehood have been met.
Still, Crown Prince Mohammed's small neighbors, the Gulf Arab states of Bahrain and Oman, are quietly ahead. The Sultan of Oman hosted a high-profile official visit from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2018, while Bahrain hosted a workshop in 2019 tout the economic dimensions of Trump's peace plan. But these are minor troubles: Worse, since 2011, Crown Prince Mohammed's efforts to buy F-35 fighter jets and other advanced weapons from the United States, which have been confused with Saudi arms sales, have caused high controversy in the US Congress.
Crown Prince Mohammed had pinned his hopes on Trump's peace plan, unveiled in January 2019, expecting it to provide cover for a breakout of relations normalization and, in return, pave the way for him to buy weapons from the United States. He sent Ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba to Washington to the unveiling ceremony of the program. But Crown Prince Mohammed soon discovered that Trump's peace plan contained a "poison pill": to secure Netanyahu's acceptance, the plan preempted Israel's annexation of 30 percent of the West Bank, including the Jordan Valley.
The annexation of Palestinian lands is bound to provoke a backlash in the Arab world, and the process of normalization sought by Crown Prince Mohammed has become quite complicated. Worse still, annexing the Jordan Valley would put King Abdullah in a dilemma, forcing him to choose between the United States and the Palestinians. Palestinians make up the majority of the inhabitants of the East Bank. Destabilizing Jordan would be tantamount to risking a resurgence of the Muslim Brotherhood, a recurring nightmare for Crown Prince Mohammed, who fears that Turkish-backed Islamists will take over Sunni Arab power throughout the region.
Crown Prince Mohammed urged Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to halt the annexation process and then further approved Ofaba to write a Hebrew-language commentary on the front page of Israel's mainstream newspaper, Yediot Aharonot. Orteba explained to the Israeli public that Israel could annex the West Bank or normalize relations with the UAE, but that fish and bear paws could not be combined. His timely intervention, combined with the loud protests of King Abdullah, succeeded in stopping the annexation process. But with the U.S. election approaching, Israel still faces the danger that the program could be restarted this fall to please Trump's evangelical supporters and Netanyahu's right-wing supporters.
The solution is to reverse Orteba's equations, and instead of letting annexation hinder normalization, why not exchange normalization for non-annexation? A normalization deal with Israel would infuriate the Palestinians, but Crown Prince Mohammed can argue convincingly that he prevented the annexation of his land. By preventing the annexation of the Jordan Valley, he could also help King Abdullah out of his predicament. At the same time, full normalization of relations would make the UAE favored by pro-Israel lawmakers on Capitol Hill (both Democrats and Republicans) and eliminate Israeli opposition to its arms sales request.
It is worth mentioning that Kushner soon saw the benefits. Rather than clinging to a progressless Trump peace plan and supporting an annexation process that complicates the U.S.-Arab partnership, it would be better to declare such a strategic breakthrough. He turned to facilitate the deal, and in the process also nailed the coffin of Trump's peace plan.
However, the deal is already in trouble: the Palestinians refuse to support a proposal that is so biased in favor of Israel. Kushner at least secured Netanyahu's cooperation by allowing Israel to annex Palestine first in exchange for a Palestinian state that would weaken long after. According to Trump, annexation is no longer considered. Israel's right-wing nationalists are outraged that Israel has abandoned its claim to the West Bank. So while Netanyahu will continue to verbally support the plan, he will not be able to achieve acceptance of it without alienating the right-wing base.
The Abraham Accords by themselves will not help resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In fact, Netanyahu is now busy convincing Israelis that they can now expect a "peace for peace" model in the UAE model without the need for territorial concessions. This would make the possibility of Palestinian-Israeli peace even more elusive.
All Trump wants is a signing ceremony at the White House, and he's unlikely to care about a UAE sheikh replacing the Palestinian leader on the signing pad with Netanyahu, not to mention that after signing, the sheikh also had a multibillion-dollar arms sale with him, rather than the huge aid promised to the Palestinians in the original peace plan. Trump has asked for the Nobel Peace Prize, but what he really deserves is a medal as a "careless willow" diplomat: If he hadn't pushed for annexation in his plans, Crown Prince Mohammed wouldn't have proposed full normalization of relations with Israel to stop it. If he does not continue Obama's policy of withdrawing troops from the Middle East, Crown Prince Mohammed will not feel the urgency to disclose his strategic relationship with Israel.
Indic concluded by writing that if the renewed flame of peace ignited by the normalization of Israeli-EMI relations is to continue to burn, more serious action must be taken to promote a resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Crown Prince Mohammed's initiative creates an opportunity for the United States to take advantage of. If Trump wants to be a pivotal peacemaker, he should take advantage of the "moratorium" created by Crown Prince Mohammed to declare that annexation can only be carried out with the mutual consent of Israel and the Palestinians. If Trump combines this with his commitment to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that everything in his plan can be negotiated, he may persuade the Palestinians to reconsider. This could provide a basis for the next president to move the peace process forward.
The Struggle of Polish Minorities: An Open Letter from Tokarczuk, Žižek and other cultural figures
On August 17, an open letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen turned Poland's sexual minorities into the spotlight. The joint open letter was written by Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk, Polish director Agnizka Holland and other Polish cultural figures, and the signature has the names of as many as 70 European and American cultural figures, including the famous Slovenian scholar Žižek and the American philosopher Judith Butler, as well as the same literary master as Tokarczuk, the American writer Paul Oster, the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, the South African writer Cocce, the British writer Ian Butler. McEwan, Irish writer Colm Tobin, etc.; and the film and television industry also has Spanish director Almodóvar, Finnish director Kaurismäcky, French film queen Isabelle Hupper and other signatures. This open letter with such a strong joint lineup is also quite direct in wording. At the beginning of the letter, the signatories expressed their anger at the series of practices of the anti-sexual minority in Poland, bluntly saying that they would support those who had been treated unjustly in this series of events, and that what was currently happening in Poland was having a negative impact on the future of democracy in the country.
A direct cause of this joint letter from the cultural circles to the European Union, as stated in the second paragraph of the letter, is based on a series of august demonstrations by polish authorities against sexual minorities in the capital Warsaw, where 48 participants were arrested and one of the leaders, Margo, was arrested for sabotaging an anti-gay van to which ultra-conservative anti-gay groups have been advocating anti-gay and anti-gay ideologies. These include claiming that homosexuality is the root cause of disease in children. According to the letter, the organization has sufficient funds, and the methods of using legal means to prevent the organization's misconduct have been futile. Margot's group also placed a rainbow flag on a statue of Christ in the movement, but in the eyes of Poland's state-run media, the actions of the arrested activists should be characterized as "hooliganism" and "provocation."
Campaign poster of incumbent President Duda photographed in Warsaw, Poland, on July 13.
The broader context associated with this incident is the increasingly conservative political climate and the proliferation of hate minority discourse in Poland in recent years. This orientation is beloved by the country's authorities and state media, which have framed it as a skillful use of political rhetoric to attack various so-called "LGBT ideologies." The letter targets the recently re-elected President Andrzej Duda and his governing authorities, arguing that Poland's rulers are to blame for the spate of events – they are merely scapegoats for sexual minorities when there are problems with national governance, but Duda's approach has also won him a degree of local support. The letters call on the Polish authorities to release the arrested persons and to stop fostering organizations that propagate hateful minority ideologies. At the end of the open letter, the cultural community did not forget to continue to ask the EU for advice, calling on the EU to cherish the "core European values", that is, equality, anti-discrimination and respect for minorities, which are being ignored in Poland.
Several media outlets, including the British newspaper The Guardian, have pointed out that the situation of Polish sexual minorities has deteriorated since President Duda first took office in 2015. The political strongman called LGBT an "ideology" and that it had infiltrated Poland from abroad to undermine the country's long-held Christian values. Duda's measures also include ending the spread of sexual minority ideology in schools and public institutions, while preventing sexual minorities from marrying or having children;
Duda beat his rivals in the second round of Poland's presidential election on July 12 this year with 51.21% to 48.79% of the vote to continue his presidency. The election was supposed to take place on May 10 this year, but the first round of votes was postponed until June 28 due to the pandemic. During his campaign, Duda repeatedly emphasized and promoted his anti-gay policies, including glorifying the harm posed by the so-called "ideology of sexual minorities." In mid-July, Polish pro-sexual minority groups sent a letter to the President asking him to acknowledge that the so-called "ideology of sexual minorities" was merely a form of political propaganda. One sex minority organizer interviewed said that the president and his party naturally had a price to pay for their rhetoric, but it was only the persecuted sex minorities who seemed to pay the price.
In Poland, as many as one-third of the country's municipalities have since 2019 declared themselves "LGBT-Free Zone", which, while not a mandatory statute, is highly visible and hostile, namely to oppress local sexual minorities. According to the Washington Post, the total population of these cities is as high as 38 million. In response to the declaration that many parts of Poland are "non-sexual minority areas", the European Union announced last month that it would stop funding six of these Polish cities, according to the Guardian and other media reports. Helena Dalli, a member of the European Union's Equality Commission, told Politico magazine that "human dignity, freedom, democracy, the principles of the rule of law, and respect for human rights, including the rights of minorities, are among the most fundamental values in Europe." The negative effects of EU sanctions are unknown, but some adverse effects on Poles are already emerging – as a result of EU pronouncements, towns in other countries (such as the Netherlands) have also announced the termination of sister city cooperation with Polish cities that describe themselves as "sexless minorities", making polish residents who have traveled between the two places as a result of the facilitation policy face inconveniences in living and working.
Even so, Duda's approach to sexual minorities and their protest movements has remained tough after his re-election as president. On August 5, three demonstrators in Warsaw hung rainbow flags on statues were arrested, followed by larger operations by the authorities on the 7th of this month. But the authorities' actions did not stop the demonstrations, as Time magazine noted in an Aug. 11 report that the "Polish Stone Wall" movement (#PolishStonewall) in solidarity with Polish minorities continued to burn, from the streets of the capital Warsaw to social media. Subsequently, the joint letter signed by Tokarczuk and others continued to appeal to the attention of the European Union when expressing the views of intellectuals, cultural circles, and art circles in Europe and the United States. Will the EU continue to pressure the Polish authorities after economic sanctions have already been imposed on the comically comical "sexless minority areas"? How will Duda, who has always been conservative and tough, continue to play with his ideological rhetoric? The direction of all this is crucial not only for the Polish minority, but also for the direction of Poland's own political situation, the country's position in the European Union, and even the utility of so-called European values.
Editor-in-Charge: Fan Zhu
Proofreader: Zhang Liangliang