Jerusalem | The Palestinian cause has long served as a glue for countries with divergent interests in the Middle East. But at a time of growing rivalries between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Palestinians find themselves trapped, isolated and in search of new allies, analysts say.
A position all the more difficult after the announcement on Friday of a normalization agreement between Israel and Bahrain, the second Gulf country to move closer to the Hebrew state in less than a month.
June. The Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas multiplies the shocking statements, the calls to derail the Israeli project of annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank.
The Arab League, Turkey and European states like France warn Israel against annexation that would undermine the so-called “two-state” solution, Israel alongside a Palestinian state.
August. The United Arab Emirates and Israel announce the normalization of their relations. In Ramallah, the Palestinian leaders are raging.
“May you never be let go by your” friends “”, tweets Hanane Achraoui, Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh referring to him “a stab in the back”.
While Arab countries have spoken out against annexation, traditional Arab allies of the Palestinians have either welcomed or endorsed the normalization agreement to be signed in Washington on Tuesday.
Until then, the Arab consensus had made the settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a sine qua non for a normalization of relations with the Hebrew state.
“The Palestinian leaders are very angry,” said Sari Nusseibeh, intellectual and former official in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Even though “in reality the Palestinians have always complained about a lack of Arab support”.
“Stuck”
This “lack of support” is more and more palpable in a Middle East marked by the upheavals of the “Arab Spring”, an Iran-Saudi polarization, and the fight against the Islamic State group.
Due to “revolutions, civil wars and other regional disputes”, “the Arabs find it difficult to agree on anything, so also on how to support the Palestinian cause,” said Palestinian analyst Ghassan Khatib .
“The Palestinians are paying the price for the deterioration of Arab unity,” he told AFP.
Example? On Wednesday, the Palestinians failed to convince their Arab League partners to condemn the Israeli-UAE deal.
But in Ramallah, we continue to refer to the famous “Arab consensus” and reject the idea that the Palestinians are diplomatically isolated.
As Jibril Rajoub told AFP, a senior official for whom “it is those who violate the Arab consensus who will find themselves isolated in the long term”.
But in reality, “the Palestinians have no real way out, they are stuck,” said a Western diplomatic source. “They are also stuck by those who want their cause back, whether it is Turkey or Iran.”
“No more wrong”
Tehran and Ankara have been the most vocal opponents of the agreement between Israel and the Emirates which has been called “treason”.
Iran maintains relations with armed Islamist groups in Gaza, but not so much with the Palestinian Authority.
Turkey, for its part, “aims to lead the defense of the Palestinian cause”, believing that the Arab countries and the West do not defend it enough, explains Gallia Lindenstrauss, of the National Institute for Security Research in Tel Aviv.
On the Palestinian side, Mr. Rajoub said he wanted to speak to “all supporters of the Palestinian cause”, without ruling out getting closer to Turkey, “a regional power, a Muslim country with which we have good relations”.
But the Palestinians should keep their distance from countries like Turkey, Iran and Qatar, also at odds with the Emirates, said Mr. Khatib.
“If they get closer to Iran, they lose Saudi Arabia, and if they choose Turkey, they will lose someone else,” he explains.
According to him, “belonging to one clan or another would cause further harm to the Palestinians.” And to summarize: “being in the middle of all this is not very comfortable”.