The writer Thomas Friedman described the Israeli-Emirati agreement as a geopolitical earthquake that struck the Middle East, and said that US President Donald Trump's description of it as a "huge breakthrough" is a deserved description.
Friedman said in an article in the New York Times that this agreement is not the size of the visit of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to Jerusalem in 1977, nor the handshake of former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat with Yitzhak Rabin in 1993, but it is close to them because it affects all the major powers in Region.
The writer explained that this agreement benefits the pro-American camp that supports moderate Islam and supports an end to the conflict with Israel once and for all, at the expense of the radical pro-Iran and anti-American camp, "the camp of the permanent Islamic struggle against Israel that will become more isolated."
The Palestinian Authority will return to negotiations
Friedman went on to enumerate the impact of the agreement on the powers in the region, saying that the Palestinian Authority will be forced to sit at the negotiating table with Israel because the agreement strips it of the idea that the Arab Gulf states will be printed with Israel only after the latter fulfills the authority’s demands to establish a state according to the authority’s specifications.
The agreement will also encourage, according to Friedman, all the other five Gulf states to follow the example of the Emirates and bring out their secret relations with Israel into the open so as not to leave the UAE alone enjoying the combination of its capital and advanced Israeli technology in all fields, and it and Israel will become the most powerful and wealthy in the Middle East.
The king of Jordan, Abdullah II, also benefited from the agreement to postpone the Israeli annexation of lands in the West Bank and revitalize efforts to transform Jordan into a Palestinian state. The division of the Jewish community in America between the hardline advocates of annexation and its opponents was defused, and the Democratic candidate for the US presidency, Joe Biden, if he succeeded Trump, because he will not have to delve into the thorny issue of annexation, and he will keep the most powerful pro-American coalition in the region to work with.
Iran and its allies are the biggest losers
The biggest losers from the agreement are Iran and its allies: Hezbollah, Iraqi militias, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), the Islamic Jihad Movement, the Houthis in Yemen, in addition to Turkey.
He explained that the implicit message that the agreement sent from the UAE to Iran is "Now we have Israel standing by our side, so do not bully us."
Friedman adds that there is another, stronger message of a psychological dimension directed at Iran and its proxies, which is, "There are now two alliances in the region; the first is an alliance of those who wish to bury the past, led by the UAE, and the second is an alliance of those who want the past to bury the future under the leadership of Iran."
Friedman concluded his article by saying that he followed the affairs of the Middle East for a very long time and was able, thanks to this follow-up, to say now with reassurance that "this region will never be the same again."