The visit of the Prime Minister of the occupying state to the Sultanate of Oman, his meeting with Sultan Qaboos, and his meetings with senior Omani officials, at a time when Israeli sports teams are participating in international competitions in Qatar, and the visit of the racist Zionist minister Meirav Cohen to Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi—all these events have provoked the indignation of many observers and political activists in the Arab world and have inflamed all segments of the Palestinian people.
The reactions we have monitored and followed in the press, media, and on various social media platforms reveal the extent of popular contempt for the Gulf normalization measures, which are no longer conducted covertly as they were in the recent past, but have become openly covered and promoted by Gulf media without shame or restraint.
Personally, I understand the reactions of the masses and the comments of journalists committed to Arab nationalism who still, despite the harsh conditions in the region, consider normalization with the occupying state to be nationally and morally unacceptable and politically and socially condemned. I join my voice to these patriots, but I differ with many of them in assessing the scope of this normalization, its causes, and the degree of exaggeration regarding its risks, especially concerning the Palestinian cause, for several reasons:
First: Normalization between some Arab countries and the occupying state did not begin with Netanyahu’s visit to the Sultanate of Oman and will not end with this step. This process began in the 1970s with the visit of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to the occupying state, his historic speech before the Zionist parliament, and his signing of a peace agreement with the occupying state. Subsequently, various visits by Israeli politicians to Gulf countries and North African states followed, where they secretly established commercial, security, and scientific relations. At that time, Oman and Saudi Arabia were at the forefront of the normalizers. The door to normalization was opened wide after the Palestinian leadership signed the Oslo Accords in September 1993 behind the backs of the Palestinian people and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Some hasty Arab leaders saw the official Palestinian position as their golden opportunity in this atmosphere to develop their relations with the occupying state and make them public. Thus came the signing of the peace treaty by Jordanian King Hussein bin Talal with Israel, granting them freedom to manage Jordanian lands for twenty-five years as a continuation of the normalization process. Qatar, Morocco, and the UAE followed. The visit of former Israeli Prime Minister Rabin to Muscat in 1994 occurred in this context, followed by Shimon Peres’s visit to Muscat in 1996, and secret visits and meetings with the Jordanian monarch and Egyptian President Sisi. Netanyahu’s visit was neither the first nor the last to an Arab country, nor was it a surprise as many colleagues portray it.
Second: The leaders of some Arab countries, especially the ruling families in the Gulf, no longer consider normalization with the occupying state shameful, while the Palestinian leadership maintains its political, security, and economic relations with the occupation and the agreements signed with it, despite all the violations committed by the occupying state over the past quarter-century, including organized state terrorism against the Palestinian people in the occupied territories since 1967 and the enactment of the racist Nation-State Law, which puts an end to all Palestinian aspirations for self-determination and the establishment of their independent state on their lands.
Thirdly, this Gulf rush into the arms of the occupying state occurs amid new alignments in the Middle East and a reshuffling of the cards following the failure of the American project known as the Arab Spring and its war on Syria and its people, as well as its desire to consolidate its hegemony over Arab countries and peoples. Netanyahu’s visit to Muscat comes in the context of salvaging what can be salvaged after the beginning of the collapse of the Saudi regime, the new Turkish positioning, and the decline of the United States’ role in the East, at a time when Russian influence in the Middle East and globally is increasing, the global acceptance of Iran’s prominent regional role, and the failure of all Israeli-American projects of division and manipulation within the Arab entity.
Israel is attempting to get closer to the Sultanate of Oman to establish an Israeli military-intelligence foothold on its territory after it became clear that Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen—to control it, to pressure Iran, and to seize the strategically important waterways—has failed. The Houthi project to build a Yemeni state independent of Saudi hegemony is imminent, and the expansion of Iranian influence in the Gulf now faces no obstacles. Fourthly, and in continuation of the above, we are witnessing a renewed Middle East whose final shape is yet to be completed. The era of American guardianship and Israeli arrogance has ended. Iran has become the sole regional power, and the resistance alliance it leads, supported by Russian presence in the East and military successes in Syria, is the strongest alliance with growing cohesion and cross-border popular support. Conversely, we are witnessing the shrinking and disintegration of the American alliance. Saudi Arabia found itself in a dilemma due to its support for Islamist terrorism and its brutal war on the Yemeni people. Now, following the Khashoggi scandal, it faces a political crisis that will result in a clear weakening of Saudi Arabia’s role and the possibility of internal fragmentation.
As for Qatar, America’s second ally in the region, which has suffered from overreach during the past decade, it has been diminished by its conflict with Saudi Arabia and has repositioned itself by alternating rapprochement with Iran and Israel to secure a regional role in the renewed Middle East. It views normalization with the occupying state as an opportunity, especially as Saudi Arabia is mired in its political and security problems, to present itself as a Sunni alternative to the Iranian Shiite expansion,
particularly since Iran has become the primary patron in the East of the Muslim Brotherhood following the military coup in Turkey.
Regarding Turkey, the second pillar of American hegemony in the East, it is now attempting, by positioning itself close to Iran and Russia and distancing itself from NATO, to find a leading role in the East against the Iranian giant and in the absence of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. In this renewed East, Israel is isolated and embattled, and it is trying, through the key of normalization, to patch up the fragments of the American alliance to stand against the resistance alliance.
Fourthly, the normalization steps that Israel has managed to achieve with some Arab rulers remain limited normalization steps, as I call them, and have not reached the level of popular, mass normalization that the occupying state desires. The governments of the occupying state are attempting, through a media and diplomatic campaign, to exaggerate the significance of this normalization, while their leaders seek to gain the support of the Israeli Jewish public and increase the influence of their parties domestically through strategic statements about the normalization steps. This is precisely what Netanyahu meant on September 6, 2016, when he stated that "cooperation with Arab countries is greater than at any time since the establishment of Israel, and what is happening today is unprecedented in our history. Cooperation is strong and takes various forms, ways, and methods, although"
يحدث مثله في تاريخنا، والتعاون قائم بقوة وبمختلف الأشكال والطرق والأساليب، رغماً عن الصعوبات والتحديات.
He has not yet reached the public stage, but what is happening behind the scenes surpasses everything that has occurred in history.
More than forty years have passed since the beginning of normalization efforts, yet the overwhelming majority of Arab peoples continue to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle for self-determination and the establishment of their independent state. Despite the bitterness of these normalization measures, they have not impacted the Palestinian reality or its struggle, nor have they succeeded in diminishing popular Arab solidarity with it. The incident in the Sultanate of Oman, where the Israeli flag was burned during Netanyahu's visit to Muscat, and Jordan's announcement that it will not renew the lease agreement for Jordanian lands to the occupying state, are clear indicators of popular Arab rejection of normalization steps. In short, political observers, analysts, and journalists should not overlook this fact and must cease referring to Arab normalization with Israel. The accurate description is normalization between Arab rulers and the occupying state.
Fifth, some political analysts describe the steps of normalization as highly selective, serving the Zionist interests that work tirelessly day and night to ignite discord among the Arab peoples, who still predominantly stand in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle to expel the occupation.
Salah al-Din al-Awwadah, a researcher specializing in Israeli affairs at the "Vision Center for Political Development," states that there is no such thing as "normalization by the peoples." However, he mistakenly adds, "You will find some supporters of the regimes, who are few and mostly from sectarian and religious minorities, especially artists; they back the regimes in all their actions and will seek normalization with the Zionist occupation." This is false rhetoric intended to mislead, as if al-Awwadah, from his Islamist perspective, wants to imply that ethnic and religious minorities in Arab countries constitute a fifth column for the occupying state. Here, the occupying state attempts to ignite discord within the Arab peoples. He further errs in his description and analysis when he claims, "The recent arrests of preachers in Saudi Arabia are a step toward normalization with the occupation," forgetting that these preachers issued numerous fatwas forbidding fighting the occupier and permitting the killing of Muslims in Arab countries.
In conclusion, it must be emphasized that the occupying state is attempting, through recent normalization measures, to escape its political and security impasse after its deterrence equation was broken in the 2006 war on Lebanon, its influence curtailed in Syria, and its failure to confront the Iranian tide and its expanding influence. The occupying state lacks a coherent political and security strategy to address the Palestinian people and their cause, and it stands perplexed before the demographic agreement in historic Palestine.
Furthermore, it lacks a security strategy to confront the demographic challenge in historic Palestine, as well as an effective security approach to counter the growing role of the Resistance Alliance in the renewed Middle East.
The Resistance Alliance’s influence in the renewed Middle East has increased significantly. The occupying state seeks to present itself as the defender and protector of the ruling families in the Arabian Gulf alongside their historical protector, the United States, or even as an alternative to compensate for the loss of its military influence in the region and its inability to wage wars to impose its dominance as it did over the past fifty years. Through these steps, it also aims to secure a substantial share of the Gulf princes’ wealth by offering them protection and enticing them to invest in Israel and to sell Israeli military and intelligence technologies.
Israeli military and intelligence technologies.
Standing against the Israeli normalization attack involves two steps:
First, halting official Palestinian normalization with the occupying state, freezing all security and economic agreements with it, and the serious commitment of the official Palestinian authorities to support the peaceful popular struggle of the Palestinian people, while developing a comprehensive popular protection plan based on partnership among all factions of the Palestinian resistance. Second, providing media and moral support to Arab popular movements opposing normalization across the Arab world to increase pressure on the Arab leaders rushing into normalization and compel them to retract their humiliating steps against their peoples and states.
Regarding their humiliating steps towards their peoples and states,
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