Satoshi Ikeuchi, Professor, Religion and Global Security, The University of Tokyo
A signing ceremony between the United Arab Emirates and Israel is going to be held on September 15 at the White House. In this ceremony, a document would be signed for establishing full diplomatic relations between two countries.
UAE would become the third Arab countries to normalize the relationship with the State of Israel.
Jordan established diplomatic relations with Israel in 1994, following 1979 Egyptian peace treaty with Israel. Jordanian peace with Israel was the result of the Oslo Accord of 1993.
The Oslo accord, signed at the White House on September 13 of 1993, created a Palestinian Authority which has a limited role to govern some part of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Full-fledged sovereign state was to be established after the “Peace Process” was completed by Palestinians and Israelis to accept living side by side with two separate states, based on the United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.
This principle of “peace process” of the Oslo Accord has given a paradigm for the Middle East conflict for the past three decades. Two state solution worked as a mantra to be recited to postpone any difficulties faced by the Palestinians and Israelis.
The peace process has been kept stalled for 27 years. It’s been long enough for generational changes and replacements of leaders to occurr, corroding the foundation of the accord and its process.
UAE took lead in proceeding to establish official diplomatic relations with Israel without waiting the final status is agreed and implemented. It might be a precursor of the change in the entire structure of the conflict.
The impending normalization would get rid of the trauma which has long inflicted upon Asian industrial nations. Those Asian nations dependent on the Gulf oil resources would no longer fear the recurrence of the “Oil Shock” unleashed during the past Arab-Israeli conflicts.
There are a whole generation inside and outside Palestine and Israel who have believed in and dreamed of the two state solutions which has been wasted and lost.
Situation on the ground in Palestine has drastically changed by the infrastructure developments and settlement constructions and it seems by now extremely difficult to geographically carve and separate two states. It might need a creative new way to find solutions which no one have yet proposed convincingly.
Now, the task to find out a solution in this impossibly difficult situation is passed on and assigned to the next generation.
