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Blows continue to rain down on the Arab world, from its own people and from its enemies 

November 29, 2021 at 1:12 pm

A road is decorated with the flags of (L-R) the US, the United Arab Emirates, Israel and Bahrain, in the resort city of Netanya in central Israel, on September 13, 2020 [JACK GUEZ/AFP/Getty Images]

“Two blows to the head hurt,” says an Egyptian proverb. But what if there are three?

The UAE has announced, for example, that Israel is going to sell 50 million cubic metres of water annually to Jordan, on top of the 55m cubic metres provided free of charge, as explained by Israeli Energy Minister, Karine Elharrar. Meanwhile, Jordan’s Minister of Water and Irrigation, Muhammad Al-Najjar, said that a declaration of intent signed with Israel and the UAE will enable the Hashemite Kingdom to obtain 200 million cubic metres of water annually in exchange for electricity. Critics are outraged that this electricity will be used in illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine.

How can the Jordanian minister claim that this is only a “declaration of intent” when the UAE has already bought 1,186 acres of land for the project to be developed in Jordan? Who does he think he is kidding?

Meanwhile, Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz has been hosted by the King of Morocco, Mohammed VI, who also happens to have the role of protector of Jerusalem with responsibility for Al-Aqsa Mosque as head of the Quds Committee formed by the then Organisation of the Islamic Conference in 1975. Gantz announced a deal to sell weapons to Morocco, including defence systems and aircraft. This is an unprecedented move by an Arab country, and one which Algeria believes is a direct threat to its own sovereignty.

The king’s position as head of the Quds Committee and the fact that he is known as the “Commander of the Faithful” as a purported descendant of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, did not stop him from agreeing an arms deal with the Israeli enemy. Israel, let us remind King Mohammed VI, has usurped Palestine; killed and displaced its people; plundered its wealth and bounties; and desecrated Al-Aqsa Mosque in the search for “Solomon’s Temple”. It is also Judaising occupied Jerusalem and expelling its people. None of that stopped the Moroccan king from signing such a deal with those responsible for such contempt for international law.

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Indeed, none of this seems to have cause the king any grief or pain whatsoever, and does not mean as much as preserving his throne and expanding his kingdom by annexing Western Sahara as part of his normalisation agreement with Israel. Everyone in the Middle East and North Africa who wants to have power, and every ruler hoping to preserve his position, has to go to Tel Aviv and kneel before the Zionists; has to be obedient and loyal in the hope that Israel will be pleased. To hell with your thrones, I say. They are stained with the blood of the martyrs. And to hell with these treacherous leaders.

The Jordanian water agreement and the Moroccan arms deal with Israel are part of the so-called Abraham Accords. They differ in content and objectives from previous peace agreements between Israel and Egypt, Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, known as the Camp David Accords of 1978, the Wadi Araba Agreement of 1994, and the Oslo Accords of 1994 respectively. The basis of these agreements was to end the state of war between them and Israel.

However, these “Abrahamic” agreements are related to the “deal of the century” project, engineered by Jared Kushner and funded by the UAE, the regional state tasked with normalising Arab countries with Israel. They are a practical implementation of the plans presented by Kushner, the one-time advisor to US President Donald Trump, at the Manama conference in June 2019, which was attended by Jordan, Israel and the Gulf states in the context of the “deal of the century”. All of this is a naive attempt to cover up the desired political goal, which is to bind Jordan to the occupation state and its security, to establish Israel as a strategic partner, and to tighten its control over Jordan politically, militarily and economically.

The US, Israel, and the UAE are dragging Jordan into an abyss by exploiting the current economic crisis affecting the Jordanians who are suffering from crazy price rises, hunger, unemployment, restricted freedoms and the arrest of journalists, students and activists. Thousands of Jordanians took part in huge demonstrations in several cities after Friday prayers last week, condemning the water agreement and the deal of the century. The government in Amman responded by arresting dozens of people.

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These two blows came from within the Arab world. The third came from Britain, which has designated all of Hamas as a “terrorist” organisation and criminalised any connection with the resistance movement. Instead of offering an apology to the Palestinian people for the catastrophe that an earlier British government caused by issuing the infamous Balfour Declaration in 1917, which allowed the Zionists to occupy the land of Palestine, Britain dealt a new blow to Palestine and its people. It is a decision that confirms its continued support for the apartheid state and justification for Israel’s violations of human rights and international law against the Palestinians. Instead of taking action against the criminal occupation state, Britain is penalising the victims of its crimes.

Blows continue to rain down on the Arab world, from its own people and from its enemies. Sometimes the two are one and the same. If they weren’t, then I doubt if its enemies would have dared to deal one blow after the other.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.