Dr. Richard Benkin
Originally published in the Daily Asian Age of Dhaka. It is the second part of a two-part article about negotiations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, with strong US involvement, that would normalize relations between the two countries and again change the way people understand the Middle East conflicts. It is written to address the people of Bangladesh, whose population is 92 percent Muslim, and whose leaders can use this moment to advance the interests of their people and re-join the democratic alliance against tyranny.
https://dailyasianage.com/news/311829/how-can-bangladesh-maximize-its-peoples-benefit
In 1978, I was teaching at a university in Chicago. One evening after finishing my day, I got on the subway train to return home; all quite routine. But what followed was not routine. One of my students followed me onto the train and sat down next to me. I liked when that sort of thing happened because my students represented such a wide range of cultures, faiths, and nations. It was—and still is—important to me that I know and understand as many different peoples as possible; and that I saw all of us as one family. The young man had come to the United States from a village in Gambia. He was rather agitated and wanted to talk to me. He told me that during the 1960s and 1970s, he and his village experienced a period of tremendous prosperity and development during that time from a contingent of Israelis who were there to teach new farming methods, help with medical treatment, and so forth. They were there as part of their government’s commitment to the people of Africa that could be seen throughout the continent and in the smiling faces of the people. Moreover, he said, they and the villagers developed strong relations that helped the Israelis adapt their technology to the real needs of the people. That all changed, he said, in October 1973, when the Gabon government cut off relations with Israel and sent the doctors, technicians, and others home.
No one like it, not even the government that took this step. Africans as a whole maintained strong relations with Israel despite Arab pressure to cut their ties with the Jewish State. Israelis then and still today have strong feelings about Africa and their ability and obligation to help its people. By the 1973 Yom Kippur War (when Egypt and Syria launched surprise attacks on Israel on the holiest day of the Jewish year), African nations were cajoled, bribed, and told to break relations with Israel in the name of “continental unity.” According to my student, this political act was a severe blow to the well-being of the village and others like it. Without the Israelis, crops produced less food, if they produced any at all. Small businesses died out and even were prevented from selling to the Israel market, which also cost them. Conditions in the villages became difficult, and many young people, including my student left for what they hoped would be opportunities elsewhere. And my student’s experience stuck with me: the elites in the capital made a political decision that benefitted them personally without regard to the devastating affects it would have on the rest of the population. And that’s what happens if leaders believe they have to take certain actions because of things like faith. They will put the interests of others ahead of those of the people they are pledged to serve.
Forty-seven years later, we can be confident that leaders of Muslim-majority nations no longer have to subordinate their people’s well-being to others thousands of miles away who refuse to accept the sovereignty in whose name these sacrifices are demanded. The US brokered Abraham Accords effectively decoupled religion from what is a geopolitical conflict in the Middle East.; and in doing so cleared the way for a host of nations to drop their forced antipathy toward Israel and take actions to help their own people. You don’t have to take my word for it either. The evidence is all around us. In the past, anti-Israel activists regularly would try to manipulate support for their actions and to activate others’ emotions tying their own political interests to supposed religious dicta for all Muslims. But it no longer works. During conflicts in 2021 and 2022, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Iran, and other actors tried to compel support for Islamist and Palestinian attacks by going reflexively to their false claims that “Al Aqsa is at risk,” and the only way to save it is to eradicate Israeli authority over the mosque and Jerusalem. Their bigoted screeds fell on deaf ears, and Iran might have been the only Muslim-majority nation to ape those cries. Most Muslims refused to be fooled. They did not allow these radical forces to drag them back to a previous era from which they now have evolved. And they were not going to subordinate their people’s well-being to that of radical rejectionists. The world had moved on, and it was high time that Palestinian leadership allowed their people to move into the 21st century.
Two months after the Abraham Accords were signed, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in the Saudi city of Neom on the Red Sea. It was an historic moment, and the first time an Israeli Prime Minister set foot on Saudi soil; though Saudi spokesmen still had to deny it occurred. A year and a half later, in May 2022, when more Israeli officials visited Saudi Arabia to meet with Saudi leaders about critical security matters, nobody tried to hide it. As Israel and Saudi Arabia moved closer, there was a marked shift in how the Saudis saw the Palestinian issue. It once was central to their policy, with successive Saudi leaders making clear that there would be no relations with Israel unless there first was an independent Palestinian state. The Abraham Accords flew in the face of those pundits and partisans alike who chirped for years that Middle East peace was dependent on pleasing (read: held hostage by) the Palestinians. That is, as long as they refused to make peace, the rest of the Muslim world was supposed to support them blindly. Not this time! Saudi Arabia did not object to the Accords between Israel and Arabs that never addressed Palestinians. The Saudis approved of and applauded them heartily. Thus, in March 2022, MBS said “We don’t look at Israel as an enemy, we look to them as a potential ally, with many interests that we can pursue together.” Four years before that, the future Saudi monarch said "It is about time the Palestinians take the proposals and agree to come to the negotiations table or shut up and stop complaining." He further said that Palestinians have rejected one opportunity after another to make peace and that Palestinian statehood is no longer a priority for the Saudis. Others got the message and began following suit.
With talk of normalization discussions heating up recently (and some in the US predicting an agreement within nine to twelve months), incorporating this seismic change in Saudi policy was handled surprisingly simply. The Saudis could not simply ignore this shift, but they also refused to let it stand in the way of a successful negotiation, as have the Palestinians in decades of failed negotiations. They would not let this chance crash and die on the craggy rocks of Palestinian inflexibility. So, yes, they raised the issue of a Palestinian state in the current talks, but it was made clear early on that this would not happen. While Israel was prepared to take a few steps along this dimension, it would not be agreeing to a Palestinian state that still does not accept it as a nation and continues launching terrorist attacks on Israel. According to all sources, we should expect any final agreement to include some concessions for the Palestinians, such as a building freeze or release of funds; but do not expect them to be anything permanent. Those concessions, by the way, likely will help Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the rough and tumbled world of Israeli politics; but that is a matter for an article in itself.
The United States has been a key player in making these agreements happen, with the Arab signers getting something substantial as part of the deal. For the UAE, it was new arms. Regardless of party or President in power, the US is committed to helping Israel maintain its “qualitative military advantage.” Israel is not an existential threat to its neighbors, but they were to it. Israel could face extinction if it ever lost a war, something its Arab belligerents did not have to worry about. That meant the United States would not sell its most advanced weapons to nations formally at war with Israel. But by signing the Abraham Accords, the UAE was no longer a belligerent and as such given access to a whole new body of American weaponry. Bahrain, already firmly integrated into the US defense network in the Gulf, gained greater US commitment in its fight against radical extremism and Iranian threats. Sudan was rewarded by the US removing it from the list of states sponsoring terrorism; and Morocco got US support for its claim to the Western Sahara. If the current talks prove fruitful, Saudi Arabia will be placed under the US nuclear defense umbrella, meaning that any attack on it could face US military action even including its nuclear arsenal. In fact, this has led to serious proposals that would give US Middle East allies the same protection currently enjoyed by South Korea. While some in Washington are hopeful that an Israel-Saudi deal could be inked within a year, US Senator Ted Cruz thinks it will take longer to finalize. An influential member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and its subcommittee on the Middle East, he believes that agreement will be reached. The Saudis have told him as much in private. He is less optimistic about the time it will take; telling me that the US still has a lot to do internally to regain its unchallenged position of strength in the region.
What does this mean for Bangladesh? Bangladesh is one of only nine Muslim-majority nations that has no level of relations with Israel. Four of them are in a state of chaos brought about by decades of civil war (Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen). That puts Bangladesh in a category with authoritarian and anti-US countries Algeria, Iran, and Pakistan, and Taliban Afghanistan (which had contacts before the Taliban takeover). Is that the group Bangladesh, which prides itself on being a democracy with a foreign policy of “Friendship to all, malice to none”? Are the conditions of their people what Bangladeshi leaders want for their people? I’m betting not and urge the Bangladeshi government to put out the right feelers now. You will find the Israelis very open to it. Remember: Israel was one of the first countries to recognize Bangladeshi independence; and the process began before the War of Independence ended when Acting President Nazrul Islam and Foreign Minister Mastaque Ahmed of the Bengali provisional government requested it. Start some level of relations with Israel, with US support; or risk being at the end of a long line of countries with much less leverage in gaining concessions for the Bangladeshi people.
Dr. Richard Benkin is an American scholar and a geopolitical analyst.