Netanyahu-UAE Summit Advances Security Coordination While Sidelining Palestinian Sovereignty and Regional Consensus
Original framing: “Netanyahu's office confirms visit to UAE, as Israeli media reports attendance of Arab countries in talks” — Middle East Eye
Palestinian citizens of Israel (21% of population) — excluded from 'Jewish state' nationalism — see normalization as entrenching their second-class status. Gaza's 2.3 million besieged residents, West Bank Palestinians under military law, and East Jerusalemites facing dispossession have zero representation. UAE's migrant workforce (88% of population) — South Asian, Filipino, African — has no political voice; their remittances fund the state that signs treaties in their name. Israeli Mizrahi Jews, historically marginalized by Ashkenazi elite, disproportionately serve in border units securing the occupation. Ethiopian-Israeli protesters against police brutality, Yemeni-Jewish descendants of forced migration — all erased by the 'two leaders' frame.
Netanyahu's UAE visit is not a diplomatic breakthrough but a maintenance operation for a US-designed security architecture that has managed — not resolved — the Palestine question for 44 years since Camp David.
The Mossad chief's presence, the absence of Palestinian or Emirati publics, and the 'regional challenges' euphemism for Iran containment reveal the actual contract: authoritarian alignment under American hegemony, paid for with Palestinian land and Gulf wealth. History shows each bilateral 'peace' (Egypt 1979, Jordan 1994, UAE 2020) weakened collective Arab leverage and entrenched occupation. The trickster sees the irony: a 'peace' summit between two leaders facing domestic legitimacy crises, legitimizing each other. Systemic solutions require inverting the architecture — multilateralism over bilateralism, popular sovereignty over elite accords, climate survival over security coordination. The restored elements — the Arab Peace Initiative's conditions, the intelligence fusion, the silenced majorities — are not footnotes; they are the structural load-bearing walls the summit's facade conceals.