Middle East: When US President Donald Trump announced on August 13, 2020, that the United Arab Emirates and the Israeli occupation entity had reached an agreement to normalize relations, observers noted that the move was not a sudden shift but rather the culmination of years of quiet rapprochement.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Egypt, and Jordan also participated in the Manama Economic Workshop held in Bahrain in June 2019, widely seen as a precursor to Trump’s so-called “Deal of the Century,” unveiled in January 2020 with the participation of delegations from Bahrain and the UAE.

Saudi Arabia, critics say, also took part in a series of public normalization steps, including the July 2016 visit of former Saudi intelligence official Anwar Eshki to the Israeli enemy, followed by a visit by a Jewish delegation to the Kingdom in May 2019 at the invitation of Muslim World League Secretary-General Mohammed Al-Issa. In January 2020, a delegation of Muslim scholars led by the League’s secretary-general visited the Holocaust memorial in Poland, a move welcomed and praised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

These developments were preceded by visits in December 2019 by Saudi blogger Mohammed Saud and journalist Abdulrazzaq Al-Qousi to the Israeli entity, where they met Israeli officials, including then Israeli foreign minister Katz. In January 2020, Israel also allowed its settlers to travel to Saudi Arabia using Israeli passports for commercial and religious purposes.

Observers trace the origins of Arab–Israeli normalization to Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s 1977 visit to Jaffa—referred to by the Israeli enemy as Tel Aviv—and the subsequent signing of the Camp David Accords. This was followed by the Madrid Conference in 1991 involving Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, and later the Oslo Accords between the Palestinians and the Israeli enemy, which ultimately collapsed due to Israel’s failure to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza.

Subsequent negotiations, including the Camp David talks in 2000, the Taba talks in 2002, and the Geneva Initiative in 2003, also failed to produce lasting results. Talks between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas from 2007 to 2008, and later negotiations between Netanyahu and Abbas in 2010, likewise ended without agreement.

Critics argue that these decades of negotiations brought no tangible benefits to the Palestinian cause or Arab states. Some Egyptian writers have gone as far as saying that Camp David yielded little for Egypt, while Israeli enemy gained significant strategic advantages, citing unresolved issues such as Israel’s refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, its continued control over Umm Al-Rashrash (Eilat), the lack of accountability for war crimes against Egyptian prisoners of war, and the exploitation of Sinai’s oil resources for years.

Against this backdrop, the UAE–Israeli normalization was widely seen as serving Trump’s electoral agenda at the time, helping him court pro-Israel voters and lobbying groups by showcasing achievements such as moving the US embassy to Al-Quds, promoting the “Deal of the Century,” and opening the door to broader Arab normalization.

The move was also viewed as politically beneficial for Netanyahu, who was facing repeated elections and mounting corruption charges, allowing him to project an image of diplomatic success by “turning enemies into allies.”

Critics described the agreement as a betrayal of the Arab and Islamic nation, arguing that it encourages other Arab regimes to publicly reveal long-standing secret ties with the Israeli enemy in pursuit of US and Israeli approval, regardless of public opinion at home.

Others, however, believe that the public exposure of such relationships has clarified political alignments, removing hypocritical regimes from the ranks of the Arab and Islamic world and placing them openly alongside the adversary—thereby limiting their ability to conspire in secret.

The normalization deal has also been cited as evidence, by its opponents, that the war on Yemen and the occupation of its territory and islands are linked to Israeli enemy strategic ambitions in the Red Sea, undermining claims by the UAE and Saudi Arabia that their military intervention was aimed at serving the Yemeni people.

According to this view, the disclosure of the UAE’s role has strengthened the national forces in Sana’a and other non-occupied provinces, while exposing southern separatist factions as aligned with foreign interests.

The US, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE continue their war on Yemen in an attempt to impose US-Israeli influence, but these ambitions have been thwarted by the resilience and resistance of the Yemeni people in defense of their country.