Palestinian human rights lawyer and former diplomat Ghaith al-Omari, a prominent advocate of the two-state solution and negotiations with Israel, gave FRANCE 24 a lengthy interview on a recent visit to Paris. In this last of a three-part series, he discussed the Abraham Accords, which saw the normalisation of diplomatic relations between Israel and several Arab countries.
Ghaith al-Omari has long been a key player in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, acting as a Palestinian negotiator at the 2000 Camp David Summit convened by then-US president Bill Clinton and again at the 2001 Taba Summit in Egypt. He was an adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas until 2006. With the peace process stalled since 2014, he now works as a senior fellow at the Washington Institute’s Irwin Levy Family Program on the US-Israel Strategic Relationship.
Al-Omari was in Paris two weeks ago to unveil the Whispered in Gaza project – a series of short animated films based on the testimonies of Palestinians living in Gaza – at the French National Assembly.
After speaking about the political situation in the occupied West Bank under the unbroken rule of the 87-year-old Abbas and the despair of Palestinian youth in the first two of this three-part interview series, al-Omari discusses the Abraham Accords, mediated by the US and signed in 2020.
While the Palestinian cause remains popular among the Arab people, the signatories of the Accords have opened a new era for the region. Has this come at the expense of the Palestinian people?
I don’t believe that the signatories of the accords have turned their back on Palestinians. We are witnessing a new way of doing politics in the Middle East, centred in the Gulf. The Arab countries that are undertaking this new approach did this to pursue their national interests, and they have every right to do so. I think the Palestinian leaders don’t realise that the region is changing, they still live in the past, they still think that the days of Gamal Abdel Nasser [the former Egyptian president who championed pan-Arabism] will come back. They will not. Those good old days of ideologies such as pan-Arabism, pan-Islamism and Nasserism are slowly disappearing and no longer dominate (the region).
This is the reality. And in this regard, Palestinians need to ask themselves if they can benefit from the new order when everyone else is focused on maximising their own interests, or are they going to remain on the sidelines and watch as history passes them by? I believe that there is a way for Palestinians to profit from the situation. As a former Palestinian negotiator, I can tell you that when we needed to effectively put pressure on the Israeli government, we call on Washington first, or course, and then Amman and Cairo. Why? Because the Arab countries that maintain diplomatic relations with Israel have the leverage to pressurise the nation’s leaders. And now, other Arab countries also have leverage. Let's not forget that the United Arab Emirates have signed the Abraham Accords on condition that the Israeli government cease annexations of Palestinian territories. So, in a certain way, they’ve already delivered to the Palestinians. Palestinian leaders now have the choice of meeting with the leaders of these countries to express their respect of the decision to establish formal ties with Israel and seek out ways to profit from the situation, or do what they’re currently doing, which is condemning the new order and refusing to engage.
How can the Palestinians benefit from the Accords?
If they choose to engage, they will obtain strengthened political support from Arab countries. As we saw recently, the United Arab Emirates was willing to sponsor a UN Security Council resolution in support of the Palestinians in their fight against the construction and expansion of Israeli settlements. More than political support, there are also possibilities for economic benefits. Here’s an example: Two years ago Israel, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates signed a deal to address each other’s shortcomings. Jordan is a regional leader in clean energy production thanks to solar power plants yet remains one of the world’s most water deprived countries. The deal was then to build solar power plants in Jordan and desalination stations in Israel [editor's note: Israel is a world leader in water desalination but is lacking in energy, particularly in the south of the country], swapping solar energy and water so that the needs of both countries are met. The United Arab Emirates meanwhile financed the project knowing full well that all surpluses sold would profit themselves. It’s a win-win-win situation. The Palestinians would have been a perfect candidate for this kind of deal as there are many project ideas such as those that they could participate in. There is much to gain but they need to make the choice of joining. The region is changing, and the Abraham Accords are here to stay. And we can see that despite the current tension between the Israeli government and its Arab counterparts, they continue to develop economic and security ties.
Regarding the current state of Israeli politics, do the Accords help restrain the most right-wing Israeli government in history?
At the end of the day, the Israeli considerations will be primarily domestic politics, like all countries on earth. Nevertheless, with the Abraham Accords countries, today Israel has to think twice before taking certain actions. I can even tell you that according to an Israeli official source, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli diplomatic offices as well as Israeli intelligence community are all very sensitive to criticisms from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. They almost got used to criticism from Egypt and Jordan; they don't take it seriously that much. But due to the popularity of the Abraham Accords in Israel, when these new partners criticise, the Israelis listen. So it creates a counter-pressure. We know, for example, that Benjamin Netanyahu held back his Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir when the latter wanted to take more provocative steps in Jerusalem. It is the prime minister's fear of the United Arab Emirates, which has rapidly developed strong ties with Israel, cutting the relation that is getting him to really pressure his minister to refrain from some of these provocative actions. He doesn’t always succeed, he may not always want to succeed, but Israel is finding itself under a new pressure, without which the extremist elements of this government would be much stronger and much more assertive.
From a broader perspective, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which once stood at the centre of international relations, seems to have been relegated to a regional issue. Do you agree? Has this helped facilitate a reconciliation between the signatories of the Accords and Israel?
Nowadays, the international community considers certain issues to be much more important, such as the war in Ukraine, China’s expanding power, Iran’s nuclear threats, not to mention the various crisis in Yemen, Syria and Libya. In terms of immediate risks, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has thus been eclipsed by much more risky conflicts. At a certain point, in the 90s’ up to the early 2000s’, there was a sense of opportunity, the idea that if you invest politically in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you might get results. Today there is no sense of possibility. The Western world and regional players have understood that Palestinians are too weak to sign a deal and the Israelis are not interested anyways in such a deal. Political leaders are hence looking for an opportunity elsewhere, and that’s why the Abraham Accords are so popular. If you were a leader, would you want to engage in something that will fail? Even so, the world has moved on. In the end, it’s up to Palestinians and Israelis to re-capture the world’s attention on the issue of their conflict. Ironically, the extremist and sometimes racist policies of the current Israeli government attract a lot of scrutiny and generated many reactions internationally. The recent summoning of the Israeli ambassador to the US department of state in Washington was almost unprecedented. Even Israel’s new allies, such as the United Arab Emirates, have begun criticising the nation all the time. It’s one thing to ignore this conflict, but if there is a collapse, especially around Jerusalem, it can have spillover effects throughout the Arab world, throughout the Islamic world. So it’s a reminder that the issue cannot be completely ignored.
This article was adapted from the original in French.
