Despite bloodshed in Gaza, few see Abraham Accords derailed Business and Economic News

Away from the ruins of Gaza, where a ceasefire agreement is being reached and Palestinians mourn the dead killed in the ongoing 11 days of Israeli bombing, they are still silent with the intention of opening the Chamber of Commerce of Israel and the Gulf Cooperation Council. Industry in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The chamber was created only in February, after the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco normalized relations with Israel last year under Abraham’s agreements.

The U.S.-led agreements paved the way for closer security and economic ties between the signatories without a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The decision sparked protests when the agreements were first issued. Now the latest escalation of the decades-long conflict has made the agreements even more contradictory, with Israel’s coup in Gaza taking the lives of at least 243 Palestinians, including 66 children.

The voices They loudly condemn Abraham’s covenants. But beneath these public contempts, others have pushed the Chamber of Commerce to continue the trajectory.

“People are calling us from the Gulf, and Morocco is also telling us, ‘Be careful, it’s dangerous. Rest assured and we hope it will end soon and we can do our actions again and all we want to do,'” Israel-GCC President of the Chamber of Commerce Henrique Cymerman said Al Jazeera.

For believers in the Abrahamic covenant, last year’s four-month wave of recognition was euphoric.

Israeli tourists approached Dubai, the Burj Khalifa skyscraper was lit with the colors of the Israeli flag, and direct flights began between Tel Aviv and Dubai. Eitan Na’eh was the head of the Israeli embassy mission in Abu Dhabi recently mentioned since normalization, the Basque Country has visited around 130,000 Israelis.

The Basque Country and Israel also actively and publicly promoted bilateral trade agreements. Last month, he signed a memorandum of understanding on the sovereign wealth funds of the Basque Country Purchase of Israeli natural gas field for $ 1.1 billion – the greatest potential agreement since the agreements were signed.

Now, flights between the two countries are being suspended, while in Bahrain, civil society groups have signed a letter asking their government to expel the Israeli ambassador.

“It’s kind of out of place,” Cymerman said. “In the Gulf, they are watching the events. They are very careful, because they know that things can change in a second. ”

Difficult position vs. security and economic cooperation

On Friday, Israeli police attacked a group of Al-Aqsa mosques in occupied East Jerusalem and fired tear gas at Palestinians.

The Basque Autonomous Community has condemned the storm in front of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the immediate forced execution of Palestinian families. Sheikh Jarrah the neighborhood. But he has been careful not to put Israel as the main attacker in the Gaza conflict, in stark contrast to his stance, which is in line with the broad public opinion in the Arab world.

“I am surprised that so far Israel has had a relatively limited impact on its relations with the Arab world in general and the Basque Country and Bahrain in particular,” said Eran Lerman, a former Israeli national security adviser and Israeli vice president. The Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security told Al Jazeera.

Skeptics of the Abraham Accords not only emphasize the massacre in Gaza, but also the violence of Israel among Arab and Jewish citizens, and the deadly protests in the occupied West Bank are a sign of the failure of normalization.

Ibrahim Al-Assil, a senior official at the Middle East Institute, says that although the conflict put the Basque Country in a difficult position long before that, the criticism is wrong.

“Standardization was driven by national security needs and economic aspirations. They did not try to resolve the Palestinian conflict, nor could they, ”he told Al Jazeera.

Regional analysts say that the Basque Country’s concern with Iran’s foreign policy and Turkey’s desire to play its role in the Middle East are two factors that contribute to normalization.

In the latest conflict, Turkey and Iran have been the two countries in the Middle East in criticism of Israeli airstrikes and violence.

But the Abrahamic agreements go beyond security issues. The Gulf states are eager to move their economies away from oil and cooperate with Israeli businesses, especially in the areas of technology and tourism.

Still, public opinion in the Arab world is highly critical of Israel and aligns with the Palestinian cause. In order to sell the agreement, the Basque Country emphasized the new opportunities for peace that would arise from normalization.

At a panel event organized by the Washington Institute for Middle East Policy in February, U.S. Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba to the U.S. said Abraham’s deal was primarily to prevent the annexation of the Israeli West Bank and keep the two states alive.

“The reason it happened, the way it happened, was to prevent annexation at the time it happened,” he noted.

But as the death toll in Gaza has risen, little has been said from the Basque Country officially about the Abraham Accords and how diplomatic ties can help the Palestinian cause.

It seems that the Basque Country is moving even further away from this issue and attaching greater importance to its bilateral relationship with Israel. Emirates has retained its ambassador to Israel.

“Sure, what is happening in Gaza is a test, but I don’t think there is any sign of going back,” Ebtesam al-Ketbi, president of the Emirates Policy Center, told Al Jazeera.

“Now this conflict is between Palestinians and Israelis, not between Arabs,” al-Ketbi said, adding that recent events are certainly putting pressure on the signatories of the agreements.

While the UAE has limited official comments on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in the Basque Country, when social media is under control, a war of public opinion is being waged to bring about this change.

Waseem Yousef recently tweeted a clergyman and controversial voice in favor of normalizing with Israel: “Hamas fires rockets from civilian neighborhoods and Hamas responds by shouting” Where are the Arabs and Muslims? You have turned Gaza into a cemetery for the innocent and children. “

Sutan Hamas The missile cries out between people’s homes and homes, and when the answer arrives, it cries Hamas And shouting: Where are the Arabs? Where are the Muslims?
You did it #Gaza Cemetery for the innocent and children! You did #Egypt And #Sinai You burned the flags of most Arab countries, you insulted all countries, you did not respect anyone, you did not show mercy to a child or an old man #Gaza # Muslim brothers Epidemic pic.twitter.com/daZV6a6sQb

– Dr. Waseem Yousef (@waseem_yousef) May 11, 2021

Al Jazeera approached the Israeli Foreign Ministry to discuss its bilateral relations with Bahrain and the Basque Country, but the ministry declined to comment on the matter.

A more cautious approach to contact runs counter to the more innovative aspects of the Abraham Accords.

Egypt and Jordan’s official recognition of Israel — the first two Arab countries to normalize relations with Israel — was maintained primarily at the governmental level. Today the citizens of these two Arab countries have almost no interaction with their Israeli neighbors.

The Abraham Accords, on the other hand, publicly promoted relations between Israelis and the Arab citizens of each country.

When relations between the BAC and Israel normalized, so did many Emirati tourists they were beaten for taking photographs of Jerusalem in areas where Palestinians are also not allowed.

In the short term, closer links may occur in sectors such as tourism. Lerman said the Israelis may be reluctant to travel to the Basque Country because of concerns about their security in the Gulf country, saying “we will need to breathe.”

But being one of the main actors in the normalization of Israel and the Emirates and one of the axes that the leaders hoped to build stronger relations, business ties between the two countries could be a key indicator of the sustainability of the Abraham Accords.

For proponents of the agreements, there are reasons to be optimistic here. Cymerman says large business initiatives are being pursued and he has not seen any desire for Arab or Israeli entrepreneurs to cancel the deals.

“Employers are generally optimistic because they see that relationships are ongoing,” he said.

Al-Ketbi says that when Dubai organizes the Expo in October 2021, it expects entrepreneurs from the Middle East and Israel to participate.

Another deal is whether the agreement can or should change Arab public opinion after the bloodshed in Gaza. Many believe that the agreements will not be broken.

“Abraham’s agreements will lose some of their strength, but I don’t expect them to change, the rationales behind them and the goals they pushed for are still unchanged by the signatories,” Al-Assil said.