Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
09 September '20..
If you had any doubt that the era in which the Arab world would continue to grant a veto over Middle East peace to the Palestinians was over, this week’s drama in Cairo put an end to it. In a meeting in the Egyptian capital, the Arab League, an entity that was founded in 1945 in order to help coordinate the war on Zionism, has made it clear that it is opting out of the Palestinian’s century-old battle against the idea of a Jewish state.
The Arab League’s rejection of Palestinian efforts to condemn the United Arab Emirates’ decision to normalize relations with Israel is almost as much of a milestone as the agreement that was pushed by the Trump administration. The Palestinian Authority and their Hamas rivals raged against the UAE’s decision as a “betrayal.” But the Arab states will no longer be dragged into supporting such a pointless conflict.
Predictably, the Palestinians are reacting to their defeat not by drawing conclusions from events and rethinking their approach. Instead, they are doubling down on rejectionism and damning their one-time allies.
But they aren’t the only ones who should be assessing whether their ideas have been rendered obsolete. Americans who have spent decades trying to pressure Israel to enable a two-state solution that would end the conflict should also recognize that the reaction to the normalization agreement demonstrates that their assumptions about the Palestinians’ willingness to make peace have also been finally demolished.
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