Gaza City – Palestinians reacted with shock and dismay after US President Donald Trump unveiled an agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Israel to normalise ties.

The deal pledges full normalisation of relationships between the two countries in the areas of security, tourism, technology and trade in return for suspending Israel’s annexation plans in the West Bank.

Both the Palestinian leadership and public were caught by surprise when the announcement came on Thursday.

“We absolutely had no prior knowledge of this agreement,” Ahmed Majdalani, the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) minister of social affairs, told Al Jazeera. “The timing and speed of reaching this agreement were surprising, especially that it came at a critical moment in the Palestinian struggle.”

Former PA minister Munib al-Masri noted Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who ruled Abu Dhabi for more than 30 years before his death in 2004, had always been a strong supporter of the Palestinians.

“The late Sheikh Zayed was a dear brother to me, I knew how much he was proud of his support for Palestine… I never imagined that in my lifetime I would see the day in which the UAE would simply sell the Palestinians out for the sake of normalisation,” al-Masri said. “It’s very shameful. I can’t believe it until now.”

Other Palestinian officials said though the news came abruptly, it was not much of a surprise.

“We were not surprised that much because the Emirati army was never on the borders ready to fight Israel,” said Mustafa al-Barghouti, leader of the Palestinian National Initiative and member of the PA parliament.

“We’ve been seeing recent strange moves by the UAE such as sending direct flights to Israel, and there were leaks of secret accords between the two in terms of scientific and economic cooperation. It is clear that these were preliminary steps to absorb yesterday’s shock.”

Rejecting the agreement

The PA and all Palestinian factions, including Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, issued official statements denouncing the UAE-Israel agreement. Palestinian leaders who spoke to Al Jazeera called it a “stab in the back”.

“We already knew that there has been normalisation going under the table, but to formalise and legalise it that way at this critical moment is shocking. It’s a stab in our back and the back of all Arab nations,” said Majida al-Masri, former PA minister of social affairs.

Al-Barghouti emphasised the deal “doesn’t introduce any change or progress, it’s far from being genuine peace”.

“This is an attempt to enforce the ‘deal of the century’ that aims to liquidate Palestinian national rights, it represents a denial of Palestinian, Arab and Islamic rights,” he said.

Palestinian leaders said the deal was “a free gift to Israel” and was made to help the re-election of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“The UAE’s position, in terms of its timing and essence, can only be understood as giving Israel leverage for free,” said Wasel Abu Yousef, member of the PLO’s Executive Committee and leader of the Palestine Liberation Front. “There’s no reasonable justification for it except that it gives more power to the occupation and increases its crimes against the Palestinians.”

Normalising de facto annexation

Although, Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed said the agreement “was reached to stop further Israeli annexation”, Palestinians saw little credibility to this claim.

“The UAE is trying to deceive and mislead the public by repackaging this shameful agreement as a service to the Palestinians and claiming that it halts annexation, but that’s merely throwing dust in the eyes,” Majdalani said.

Al-Masri said annexation was “already going nowhere because the entire world was standing against it”.

“So using annexation as a pretext is an exploitation of Palestinians to cover up what’s been done here,” al-Masri said. “But neither the UAE nor other countries are entitled to speak in the name of Palestinians.

“The format of the agreement implicitly approves of Israel’s annexation of Jerusalem. It only opposes ‘further annexation’ while approving what’s been annexed already.”

Palestinian leaders argued the agreement will not stop Israel from extending sovereignty to the West Bank.

“Instead of de jure annexation, Israel is furthering its creeping annexation. It’s accelerating and increasing its aggression on the ground in terms of settlement construction, home demolitions and what’s happening in the Ibrahimi and Al-Aqsa mosques, and in lands that fall in area C,” said al-Masri.

Palestinians noted that Netanyahu had kept the door open to annexation and merely said it was temporarily delayed.

“Netanyahu responded directly to this point and said that annexation is still on the agenda,” al-Masri said. “This is a slap in the face of the UAE – to prove them wrong and embarrass them.”

Breaching Arab positions

Al-Barghouti called the agreement “a divergence from the Arab peace initiative” and “a stab in the back of Arab positions”.

“It even contradicts the interests of the Emirati people themselves and goes against the historic position of the UAE’s previous rulers such as Sheikh Zaid,” he said.

Majdalani said the deal aims to reshape the Arab approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. “It allows Netanyahu to say that he can achieve peace in return for peace with the Arabs without withdrawing from any territories.”

Al-Barghouti said he fears the agreement will give a pretext to countries such as Germany and the United Kingdom – which welcomed the deal – to look away from the situation.

“But we’re surprised that Arab governments like Bahrain and others would openly express support for this deal. Did they forget the Palestinian people and their rights? Did they forget Jerusalem and Islam?” he said.

Added Abu Yousef: “The world should see Israel’s accelerated and increased crimes on the ground in the occupied territories, not just the threat of annexation.”

‘Struggle will continue’

Despite the disappointment, Palestinians emphasised Thursday’s announcement will not affect their determination to end the occupation.

“Our sacrifices that we gave in confronting this occupation will not go to waste, we will strongly hold on to our rights and principles, supported by all the free people of the world,” said Abu Yousef.

Majdalani the Palestinian leadership was looking a ways to respond. “We took an immediate decision to recall our ambassador to Abu Dhabi and we’re currently having all options on the table to consider.”

Palestinian officials urged the Arab world and international community to act. “The best response to the deal can only come from fellow Arab nations,” al-Masri noted.

Abu Yousef said the PLO “calls on Arab states to issue a unified position against the UAE’s decision, so that there wouldn’t be space for other Arab countries to follow its lead in weakening Arab positions and support to the Palestinians”.

He said the UN’s International Criminal Court (ICC), which may soon announce an investigation into Israeli actions in occupied Palestine, must now act.

“The international community, particularly international organisations like the UN, are now urged more than ever to take responsibility in stopping these crimes and empowering our people. Hence, we call on the ICC to expedite its ruling on holding the occupation accountable,” Abu Yousef said.

Al-Masri concluded: “We still have hope on the Arab people, including the Emirati people who unfortunately cannot express their mind due to terrible state repression. The Arab public still rejects such normalisation.”

Back in October 2018, Israeli Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev became the first Israeli to visit Abu Dhabi in an unprecedented official state visit.

She witnessed for the first time the Israeli national anthem being played at a judo tournament and later visited the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, where she wrote “I wish a good life and peace for all” in Hebrew in the visitor’s book.

Regev, a former chief Israeli military spokeswoman, is known to Palestinians and critics for her more egregious statements, such as describing African migrants in Israel as a “cancer”, and calling on her government last year to revive its policy of assassinating Palestinian leaders.

Israeli Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev, right, shakes hands with Mohamed Bin Tha’loob al-Derai, President of the UAE Wrestling Judo and Kickboxing Federation in Abu Dhabi [File: Kamran Jebreili/AP news agency]

Her visit to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was a clear sign of the UAE working to push its covert relations with Israel out in the open.

Since Regev’s visit, the Israeli Communications Minister, Ayoub Kara, as well as Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz have also travelled to Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

“I will continue to work with the prime minister to push for the policy of normalisation that we’re leading based on Israel’s capabilities in the issues of security, intelligence and different civil opportunities,” Katz said at the time of his visit in July 2019.

Translation: The Israeli Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz visited Abu Dhabi and participated in the UN Climate Change Summit. Katz held several meetings, including a meeting with a senior official in the Emirates.

Clandestine relations – including intelligence sharing and direct and indirect flights – between Israel and the UAE have been going on for decades.

According to Adam Entous, a reporter for The New Yorker, the think-tank and government-backed Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research was established in 1994 for academic research but later “became a conduit for contacts with Israel”.

The think-tank was the perfect cover to establish Israeli communications, and was born out of Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed’s (MBZ) desire to buy fighter jets from the United States in 1990, and had dreaded Israeli objections to the sale.

Sandra Charles, who was working for bin Zayed at the time and was a former official in the George HW Bush administration, arranged an off the record meeting between Emirati academic Jamal S al-Suwaidi – who later established the think-tank – and Israeli diplomat Jeremy Issacharoff. This led to then Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin to give the green light for the US fighter jets to be sold to the UAE, where a “sense of trust” was built between Israel and Abu Dhabi, Entous reported US officials as telling him.

‘Unlikely geopolitical significance’

Fast forward to now and the official announcement of Israel and the UAE’s formal relations on Thursday has followed through years of backroom talks and under the table meetings, analysts say.

The agreement, which was brokered by the US, is known as the Abraham Accord, and vows to work towards a “full normalisation of relations”. The UAE has become the third Arab country to recognise Israel, but unlike Egypt and Jordan, does not share a border nor has it fought any wars with Israel.

Subsequently, the agreement is “unlikely to have geopolitical significance, in the sense that it does not have a serious impact on the balance of power either regionally or internationally,” Mouin Rabbani, the co-editor of Jadaliyya, said.

Diana Buttu, a Haifa-based analyst and former legal adviser to Palestinian peace negotiators, said the UAE did not agree to normalising relations with Israel because it needed to take back a part of its territory – such as in Egypt’s case with the Sinai Peninsula – or because they believe that peace is on the horizon.

“This is the UAE acting like they are doing us a favour and saying they are doing it for the benefit of Palestinians, but without ever actually asking whether this is what we wanted,” she said. “Thirty years after the Madrid talks, you have the world speaking on our behalf but still not talking to us.”

In a way, she added, this has “highlighted everything we already knew, the way the Arab leaders have always paid lip service to the Palestinian people”.

‘Destructive role’

In the coming weeks, UAE and Israel will meet to sign bilateral agreements on investment, tourism, telecoms, security, healthcare, culture, the establishment of embassies and other areas of “mutual benefit”.

Emirati officials have attempted to spin this agreement as being done in return for Israel to halt its annexation plan for the already illegally occupied West Bank.

Hind Al Otaiba, the director of strategic communications for the UAE’s foreign ministry, tweeted the tripartite call between the US, Israel and UAE “resulted in an agreement to stop Israeli annexation of Palestinian lands”.

This echoed MBZ’s tweet that the agreement was reached to “stop further Israeli annexation of Palestinian territories”.

However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said annexation was still very much on the table and the plans were only “temporarily suspended”.

“In both versions of this, there has been no commitment by Israel to halt the construction of settlements in the occupied West Bank, which Israel effectively controls,” Elham Fakhro, a senior Gulf analyst from the International Crisis Group, said.

“This is a blow for Palestinians hoping that Arab states wouldn’t normalise their relations with Israel until a final agreement on statehood.”

According to Nawaf Tamimi, a Middle East commentator, the Abraham Accord fits with the “destructive role” the UAE is playing in the Middle East “in sustaining wars in Yemen and Libya and undermining the democratic transition in Tunisia”.

“Under the fascinating image promoted by Abu Dhabi lies plots for destabilising MENA countries in a way that destroys any ambition for change in the Arab world,” he said.

“This model of destruction on one side and making ‘peace’ with Israel on the other fits the UAE narrative of internal and regional stability that would be achieved via its efforts to repress any democratic sound from any Arab government, as democracy is a nightmare for MBZ.”

Little room to manoeuvre

The Palestinian Authority and other Palestinian groups have condemned the agreement as a “betrayal of Jerusalem, the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Palestinian cause”.

The PA has recalled its ambassador from the UAE and called for an immediate emergency session of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to reject the agreement.

“The PA still relies on a lot of money from the Gulf states, and I think they can see where this is all heading … with Bahrain and Oman possibly being next to normalise relations,” Buttu said.

And despite the animosity between President Mahmoud Abbas and his archrival Mohammad Dahlan, who is based in the UAE and is an adviser to MBZ, Abbas cannot say or do much.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas speaks during a leadership meeting in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank [File: Alaa Badarneh/Reuters]

“This has put Abbas in a really tight corner, where he’s got very little room to manoeuvre,” Buttu said, adding it has only compounded the “fierce debates” that have been going on within the PA leadership circles about its future.

“These are questions that need to be had right now because all of the manoeuvring that they have done over the course of the past two and half decades has completely failed,” she explained.

Yet for Netanyahu and Trump, the agreement could not have arrived at a better time.

“It was very clearly timed to boost the political fortunes of both Trump and Netanyahu, who may also be facing an election soon and now has an excuse for not yet implementing annexation,” Mouin Rabbani said.

Buttu agreed.

“Netanyahu’s political career has been on life support before this announcement,” she said. “He can now boast – as he already did – that he is one of three Israeli leaders who has brokered agreements with the Arab world.

“And that – for a [occupying] country that has been desperately wanting recognition as being ‘normal’ – is fairly a big deal.”