YESTERDAY Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett met with the leader of the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Zayad al-Nahyan, in the first official state visit since the UAE and Israel established diplomatic ties last year after that country signed up to the so-called Abraham Accords.
The Abraham Accords were a series of deals brokered by the US under ex-president Donald Trump under which the wealthy Gulf state forged diplomatic ties with the Zionist regime.
Bahrain and several other Arab countries have struck similar deals creating an alliance with Israel aimed at the struggle of the Palestinian people and against Iran. Bahrain and Morocco have followed the UAE in establishing full diplomatic ties with Israel while Sudan has promised to follow suit in the future.
Jordan struck a deal with Israel in November to send electricity to it in exchange for desalinated seawater.
When the deal was announced, thousands of Jordanians demonstrated on the streets of the capital Amman opposing it and the kingdom’s normalisation of ties and close relations with Israel, condemning it as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause.
This deal, which included the UAE, was condemned by Jordanians as being a political effort to place Jordan firmly in the Abraham Accords.
In Morocco, protests involving unions and political parties took place in cities across the country denouncing the Moroccan government’s security pact with Israel and calling for solidarity with the Palestinians.
The entire Abraham Accords has been denounced by the Palestinian liberation movement Hamas as nothing more than seeking to assert the Israeli regime’s military, political and economic hegemony over the region in order to plunder its wealth and marginalise the Palestinian struggle.
It is aimed not just at the Palestinian struggle but against Iran. This was made clear by Bennett’s predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu who negotiated the Accords saying they would offer Israel new ‘regional allies’ against Iran.
Bennett’s visit to the UAE comes just as talks between Iran and major world powers have resumed in Vienna over the 2015 nuclear deal that offered to lift sanctions on Iran if it curbed its nuclear programme.
This deal was unilaterally torn up by US imperialism in 2018 at the urging of the Israeli regime. Now Bennett is demanding the resumption of these talks be halted, and this reactionary normalisation ‘regional alliance’ be used in a war to crush Iran.
Monday’s meeting took place on the day that Israel announced it had completed an £800 million fence around the Gaza Strip to reinforce its blockade on the two million Palestinians in Gaza.
The announcement was met with defiance by the Palestinians in Gaza with militant groups, including Hamas, promising an ‘escalation’ over the blockade that is preventing any aid from reaching the people.
One source told the press: ‘We are considering options for an escalation with Israel in light of the continued siege of Gaza and the delay in rehabilitating the Strip.’
What is clear, is that the so-called Abraham Accords, and the subsequent meeting to cement ‘regional interests’ between the Zionist state and the reactionary Gulf states, has forged an alliance in preparation for a war by imperialism against Iran and to crush the Palestinian struggle.
The UAE and all those who have signed up to it have broken decades of the Arab League consensus against recognising Israel until it signed a deal establishing a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
In Britain, the Tory government have thrown the full support of British imperialism behind the Zionist state and its war on Palestinians when they outlawed the political wing of Hamas and made it a criminal offence to show any support for the liberation movement.
Now is the time for the working class to take action on the side of the Palestinian people and against imperialist war on Iran by demanding the unions call a general strike to kick out the Tories, and bring in a workers’ government that will recognise the independent state of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital and give it all the material support it requires to flourish.
