OPINION - GCC divided over peace with Israel

By Hussain Abdul-Hussain

-The writer is a Washington-based political analyst. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post and Kuwaiti daily Al-Rai, among others.

WASHINGTON (AA) - The sudden escalation between Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. on one hand and Qatar on the other has been inexplicable.

Saudi and Emirati media went on the offensive, presumably in response to statements from Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, in which he had presumably broken with the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) hardline stance against Iran.

Doha denied that its sovereign had made such statements, and argued that its official news agency -- which had posted the controversial remarks -- had been hacked, an argument that Washington later confirmed.

But the media war that started with the fake Qatari statements took a life of its own.

Riyadh and Abu Dhabi eventually led an all-out diplomatic offensive against Doha, severed diplomatic ties, closed off airspace to Qatari flights and ports to Qatari maritime traffic.

Egyptian President Abdul-Fattah al-Sisi, whose economic survival has depended on cash infusions from the U.A.E. and Saudi, happily followed suit.

A few Arab capitals, with minor diplomatic weight, joined the anti-Qatar front. Some countries with more weight, such as Jordan, tried to sit on the fence by merely downgrading diplomatic representation with Qatar.

When all was said and done, Qatar survived the offensive while maintaining ties with many nations, including Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Algeria, Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia.

Most important of all, Doha won decisive praise from Washington, despite a few odd and undiplomatic tweets from President Donald Trump. America’s top political brass spoke against Trump’s tweets, and praised Washington’s ties with Doha. Isolating Qatar was far from happening.

As dust from the original spat settled, and as Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Sabah received representatives of the parties involved and shuttled between the contending capitals, a clearer image started to emerge about the real reasons behind the GCC rift, which seems to be rooted in reasons that have nothing to do with Iran or Syria.

As we noted in this publication [1] on the eve of Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, the U.S. president’s choice of Riyadh was not much about American ties with Gulf states, but more about a brewing scheme for peace between Israel and the GCC countries.

After his election, Trump appointed his son-in-law Jared Kushner, an Orthodox Jew, as the person in charge of “Arab-Israeli peace.” Due to his inexperience, the 36-year old Kushner leaned on Jason Greenblatt -- a fellow Orthodox Jew and a longtime staffer with the Trump organization -- to coach him.

Greenblatt immediately offered a line that Israel has been peddling for some time, the last of which was during the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House, in February, when in a joint presser with Trump, the Israeli official said that fear of Iran had brought Israelis and Arabs closer together.

Netanyahu presides over a tenuous governing coalition beholden to hardline settler parties that are not willing to offer Palestinians any concessions, often arguing that Israel should retain the historic land of the Kingdom of Judea (which existed before and shortly after the first century CE) in the West Bank.

This means, for Mr. Trump to achieve any of his grandiose peace promises, Netanyahu will need alternative peace.

Hence, the Israelis and Greenblatt believe that Israel can conclude peace treaties with GCC countries, an achievement that will make Trump look great, and will be rewarding for the Israelis.

The only problem is that such peace will result in Palestinians losing any leverage that they might have if they ever engage in peace talks with the Israelis.

Greenblatt’s plan is being touted as the “outside-in” approach, as opposed to the traditional “inside-out” scheme, under which Arab peace with Israel is contingent on Palestinians getting what they want from the Israelis, before they approve of collective Arab peace with Israel.

Kushner, his wife -- Trump’s daughter Ivanka who converted to Orthodox Judaism in order to marry him -- and Greenblatt had to acquire special permission from the rabbi of New Jersey to board the presidential plane to Saudi Arabia, since flight time interfered with the Jewish Sabbath. Once in Riyadh, Greenblatt observed the rest of the Sabbath in his room, and only emerged out of it on Sunday morning, when Trump was about to start holding bilateral meetings, which Greenblatt attended.

Word from a few meetings has it that GCC-Israel peace was one of Trump’s priorities, which confirms the idea that the American trip to Saudi Arabia was driven by peace aspirations, more than anything else.

Trump certainly made common cause with his counterparts about the Iranian threat and other items. But without the prospect of peace, Trump’s visit to Riyadh offered little news: Saudi Arabia had already bestowed a medal on former President Barack Obama.

The much-celebrated $110 billion Saudi arms deal with the U.S., which Trump described as “hundreds of billions” and “jobs, jobs, jobs” for American workers, now seems more fake than real, according to a study [2] by Bruce Reidel of the Brookings Institute.

Shortly after Trump landed in Israel, Netanyahu received him by saying that he dreams of the day when an Israeli prime minister would be making the trip from Riyadh to Jerusalem, another indication that to the Israelis, the most important element of Trump’s Saudi visit was the optics of a Saudi-Israeli peace treaty.

The final proof that the GCC rift had been brewing over peace with Israel comes from Washington, where an anti-Qatar campaign had started a week before Trump’s trip.

Researchers working for think tanks funded by friends of Israel went on a frenzy of publishing articles against Qatar, accusing it of supporting Sunni terrorism. These researchers cried foul that Doha was hosting five Taliban militants and that it was hosting Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood leaders.

But the Taliban leaders live in Doha at the request of Washington. These Taliban were held in a U.S. prison until the Obama administration released them in an exchange that saw the release of U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl.

Washington reasoned that keeping these Taliban in Qatar would keep them an ocean removed from Afghanistan, where they could rejoin the movement’s rank and file and resume fighting the U.S. and its interests.

As for hosting Hamas and Brotherhood leaders, the problem is an old one that had caused a rift within the GCC in the past, before it was resolved.

When Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. demanded that Qatar blacklist the Brotherhood and eject Hamas leaders, Doha countered by saying that the Brotherhood was not on the terrorism lists of the U.S., the EU, the UN or the Arab League.

Doha also argued that the Brotherhood was operating legally and had parliamentary representation in Arab countries including Kuwait, Jordan, Tunisia and Morocco.

Accordingly, with Kuwaiti mediation, the GCC buried the hatchet after agreeing that the way of dealing with the Brotherhood was a sovereign issue, and that no state should sponsor cross-state anti-government Brotherhood activity. Since then, GCC countries have been living in peace over the Brotherhood disagreement.

Because nothing changed with Qatar and the Brotherhood, and because Qatar is fighting Iran tooth-and-nail in Syria and Iraq, and is a member of the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen and against Daesh, the only probable reason for the rift between Doha and its two fellow Gulf capitals must have been over peace with Israel.

Perhaps Qatar had sensed the coming diplomatic onslaught and had accordingly instructed Hamas to issue a new declaration announcing that it can live within the 1967 borders of a Palestinian state. But Israel is way beyond the 1967 borders. Netanyahu went on TV to shred the new Hamas declaration. Shortly after, a confrontation ensued within the GCC, with a Saudi-Emirati demand that Qatar strangles Hamas once and for all.

What happens next is anybody’s guess.

* Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu Agency.

[1] http://aa.com.tr/en/analysis-news/opinion-who-chose-saudi-for-trump-s-first-visit/818697

[2] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2017/06/05/the-110-billion-arms-deal-to-saudi-arabia-is-fake-news/