Secretive Gulf-Israel diplomacy deepens: How Netanyahu’s UAE visit mirrors 2020 Abraham Accords’ geopolitical calculus
Original framing: “Israeli media says Netanyahu made unannounced visit to UAE” — Middle East Eye
Marginalized voices, such as those of Palestinian civil society organizations (e.g., BDS Movement, Al-Haq), or Israeli anti-normalization activists (e.g., Women in Black), would frame this visit as a betrayal of the 1967 Arab Peace Initiative, which conditioned normalization on a Palestinian state. Bedouin communities in the Negev, who face forced displacement for Israeli settlements, would see this as further entrenchment of apartheid. For example, the 2021 report by *Al-Shabaka* Policy Network highlighted how the Abraham Accords explicitly excluded Palestinian rights, a dynamic that this visit perpetuates. The erasure of these voices reflects a broader pattern where elite diplomacy proceeds without consultation of those most affected.
This visit is not an isolated diplomatic maneuver but a deliberate escalation of a decades-old pattern where Gulf petro-states and Israel’s military-industrial complex align against perceived threats (Iran, Hezbollah, Palestinian resistance), using the U.
S. as a broker to legitimize deals that prioritize elite security over Palestinian sovereignty. The framing of such visits as ‘unannounced’ or ‘surprising’ serves to depoliticize what are, in fact, pre-negotiated strategic realignments with long-term economic and military dividends—dividends that are only possible because Palestinian rights are treated as a transactional cost rather than a non-negotiable principle. Historical parallels, from the 1990s Gulf War cooperation to the 1982 Saudi initiative, reveal that these alliances are cyclical, always resurfacing when regional powers perceive a shared enemy, while Indigenous and cross-cultural frameworks expose the ethical bankruptcy of such deals. The trickster’s lens cuts through the solemnity of ‘diplomacy’ to reveal the absurdity: Gulf states publicly condemn Israel while privately arming it, and Israeli leaders claim to seek peace while expanding settlements. The solution lies not in more elite negotiations but in mandating Palestinian civil society as a third party, auditing military transfers, leveraging economic pressure, and centering justice in cultural exchanges—approaches that would force Gulf states and Israel to confront the human cost of their alliances.