Israel and the United Arab Emirates have reached
an agreement to fully normalize relations
after years of secretly working together on
countering Iran and other issues.
Under the deal, Israel has agreed to temporarily
suspend plans to annex the West Bank — a
move that appeared to have already been on
hold due to international condemnation.
The United Arab Emirates has never been engaged
in war with Israel.
On the contrary, the United Arab Emirates’
air defenses, its missile defenses, are manufactured
in Israel and are probably controlled from
Israel.
So, this is an ally of Israel in practice.
It always has been.
Now this has been made public.
Whatever the president and his ambassador
to Israel say, I would take Netanyahu at his
word.
There is no change in his plans.
He said it.
You ran a clip from him, speaking in Hebrew.
They will continue the ongoing colonization
of the West Bank.
They will continue to control it absolutely.
Israel will continue to be the only sovereign
between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.
And it will continue its discriminatory policies
whereby Israelis have one set of laws and
Palestinians, under occupation, basically
have the law of the jungle, i.e. military
occupation, military courts, in which everybody
is always guilty and in which about 20% of
the Palestinian population has been sent to
prison.
So, we’re talking about a jackboot regime
which is going to be sustained and continued
by this deal.
That’s not peace.
That’s continuation of colonization and
occupation.
A just deal means equal rights for everybody.
A just deal means that national rights have
to be accepted for both people.
The nation-state law — Israel is a Jewish
nation-state — in 2018, said there’s only
one people entitled to self-determination
in the land of Israel.
And that cannot stand.
There are two peoples there.
Any solution that doesn’t accept that and
give them equal rights — what is paraded
as a, quote-unquote, “two-state solution”
is a one-state solution.
One state has sovereignty and control; the
other state does not.
One state controls movement of everybody in
and out; the other so-called state, the Palestinian
state, under a so-called two-state solution,
would have no control over immigration, import/export,
groundwater, airspace — it would not be
sovereign.
Moreover, Palestinians would be restricted
to a tiny fraction of the Occupied Territories,
let alone of the entirety of Palestine.
This is not just.
And the current situation is not sustainable.
So, there has to be equality of rights between
both people, on every level — religious
rights, personal rights, political rights
and national rights.
