Thanks to Trump, a revolutionary peace treaty

Peace seems to be growing more fashionable.”

It seems truly difficult for some people to support peace, but here it is, and it’s a real, true peace. The agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates promises stability, water, technology and energy.

Battle lines are already being drawn by two “armies” — one in favor of the deal, and the other against.

People who have defined themselves as defenders of peace are attacking this deal, just because it has the signatures of President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Honorable people who hated the “Deal of the Century” now don’t care that it has been eclipsed by a historic peace treaty between the UAE and Israel.

The condition for the pact between Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Netanyahu, with Trump as co-signer, is the setting aside of the Trump administration’s “Peace to Prosperity,” which would have allotted the Palestinian Authority 70 percent of Area C, with 30 percent to Israel (including the Jordan Valley, which would have come under Israeli sovereignty).

The UAE treaty was reached by renouncing this plan. And yet, the Palestinians who fought the plan in all arenas — both diplomatically and through terrorism — are not happy with the renouncement. Instead, they declare it a betrayal — an Arab abandonment — thus revealing that they hate any peace that they themselves did not choose, which really means that they choose “no peace” with Israel, as they have always done.

To liberal Europeans and leftist Jews, peace in the Middle East loses its meaning when it’s not a deal signed by Palestinians. It appears that the only aim of these so-called “peace warriors” is political: to keep alive the old international order, the one that has actually blocked real peace under the false pretense that there can be done until Israel leaves all “illegally occupied territories,” included Jerusalem.

At the head of the old group of Palestinian peace-lovers is Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who, just like the ayatollahs — one Sunni and the other Shi’ite — is fighting for the leadership of Islam by focusing on hatred of Israel. Erdoğan has even announced that he will recall his ambassador from the UAE.

Meanwhile, Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, is accusing the Arabs of abandoning the Palestinian cause in favor of an “unspeakable, warmongering, human-rights violating regime” like Israel. And he dares saying so while Iran has deployed an army of soldiers and terrorists throughout the Middle East and the rest of the world, and persecutes all dissidents (and hangs homosexuals) across the Islamic Republic.

The reaction of the European Union, via a tweet by High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell, is tremblingly lukewarm: “I welcome Israel-UAE normalization; benefits both and is important for regional stability … EU hopes for resumed Israel-Palestinian negotiations on a 2-state solution based on int’l agreed parameters.”

In fact, Bin Zayed had already written in the agreement itself that it is a road map that will be completed when the needs of the Palestinians are met. This Borrell remembers, while forgetting the extremely innovative and courageous path that the agreement is inaugurating — this is the first time that a relationship between an Arab state and Israel was conceived in the perspective of a general peace with the Jewish state, omitting the conditions of the old “Arab Initiative.”

Now it is clear that the new situation in the Middle East is set between two blocs, one that’s finally embraced the concept that Israel, far from being a detriment, bears positive fruit.

Who is part of this alliance?

Egypt, which hailed the agreement between Israel and the UAE; Bahrain and Oman are said to be following suit; Morocco and Saudi Arabia are also observing the field with interest. This peace is a revolution that breaks an initiative based on the three gigantic “no”s” — No to peace; No to recognition of Israel; and No to negotiations — which garnered curses and insults against those who dared to reject it.

The basic veto against peace came from the Palestinians and radical Islamists, who used it as a shield. It has become the flag and the rationale of the ayatollah-led regime in Tehran, which extended its reach to Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon, through its proxy Hezbollah, which it employs massively in Syria and in Iraq.

But the determination of great parts of the Sunni world to save itself became strategic, when President Barack Obama chose to balance the two Arab worlds with the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

At that time, Israel had begun to demonstrate not only its ability to manage agriculture, water and medicine, but also to face the Iranian threat with military and cyber weapons, becoming a desirable ally for the Arab world.

The responses on the part of Turkey and Iran are nothing new. These enemies of the UAE-Israel agreement have already had other clashes with the Emirates and the moderate Sunni world.

Hatred against Israel, however, no longer carries much weight as a weapon for hegemony. Peace seems to be growing more fashionable.