While a positive development, there are risks involved unless the context of the reconciliation remains well-defined
If one takes the recent headlines about Bahrain at face value, then the monarch of the Sunni Gulf state really loves Jews, despite the fact that no more than a few dozen live under his rule and that Manama has no formal diplomatic ties with Israel.
Nevertheless, praise has been heaped upon Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, who earlier this year denounced the Arab boycott of Israel to a visiting delegation of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and asserted that Bahrainis were free to visit the Jewish state.
Given the media narrative in Israel, one could not be faulted for believing that al-Khalifa was al-Beneficent, perhaps even planning to transfer over some air miles to the many activists and political opponents he has jailed so that they may travel on El Al to Tel Aviv.
The confusion surrounding the interfaith conference held in Los Angeles last week, during which the Bahraini leader’s prior statements gained notoriety, was clarified by Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action at the Wiesenthal Center, who stressed that his organization does its work with “eyes wide open.”
Speaking to The Media Line, he explained that the focus of the summit was on building religious bridges and not governmental ones. “We are not here to talk about the political side of things in Bahrain or anywhere else because if we did we can start talking about the $150 billion given to Iran in the nuclear deal [signed with world powers in 2015] and the fact that U.S. President Donald Trump visited Saudi Arabia [in March].
“If we waited for perfect conditions, the perfect regimes, then we would not be operating at all. The focus is on interfaith relations.”
While acknowledging that Bahrain has “a long way to go” in terms of respecting the rights of all of its citizens, Dr. Cooper highlighted three crucial points—that the royal family denounces terrorism of all kinds; that the Kingdom will be building a museum dedicated to religious tolerance; and that the Wiesenthal Center will be bringing NGOs from Bahrain on a trip to Israel later this year, in accordance with its mission statement which does not include being a mouthpiece for any government.
The brouhaha surrounding Manama comes against the backdrop of this month’s media frenzy centered on rumors that a high-ranking Gulf official recently visited Israel, possibly Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, according to some unconfirmed reports. This is part and parcel of an even greater enthusiasm—hailed repeatedly by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as the dawn of a new era—over a growing rapprochement between Israel and the Sunni Arab world.
While undoubtedly representing a tremendous opportunity for all parties involved following decades of bitter animosity, the fervor expressed over the fostering of these ties on Israel’s side and among many of its supporters—as evidenced by the misrepresentations disseminated in the wake of the Wiesenthal Center’s forum—risks blurring two important realities; namely, that the countries being courted by the Jewish state are by all western standards totalitarian, and that the Muslim nations in question are warming up to Jerusalem for the sole reason of curbing Shiite Iran’s rising power.
On both points, Bahrain offers a convenient example.
During the “Arab Spring” uprising, the Sunni-ruled, Shiite majority state accused Tehran of fomenting civil unrest among the local population, prompting Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to intervene militarily on behalf of the monarchy. Concurrently, the Shiite-dominated Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, then Bahrain’s largest political party, pulled out of the lower house of parliament in protest of the suppression (members of the unelected upper house, the Consultative Council, are directly appointed by the king). Last year, Al-Wefaq was altogether dissolved by Bahrain’s highest court.
Not surprisingly, then, Amnesty International earlier this month slammed the Kingdom for “dramatically” escalating its crackdown on dissent, which includes the recent banning of the secular Wa’ad political party on charges of “advocating violence, supporting terrorism and incitement to encourage crimes and lawlessness.” Hundreds of other opponents of al-Khalifa have similarly been persecuted and some imprisoned, a situation Human Rights Watch previously described as “dismal.”
As such, Bahrain is anything but a free society and it is clear, moreover, that any burgeoning relations with Israel are premised on the intersecting objective of neutralizing Iran’s expansionism and potential nuclearization, which, for its part, Jerusalem views as an existential threat.
That the interests of Sunni Arab states currently align with Israel’s affords cooperative possibilities that have never existed, and this is indeed encouraging, given historical relations between them. However, this potential cannot be unlocked and, for that matter, poses potential dangers, unless the context and reasons behind the reconciliation remain correctly defined.
The Jewish state is viewed by Sunni Muslim countries as a bulwark against Tehran, amid an intensifying geopolitical battle for influence in the Middle East pitting the two major Muslim denominations against each other, with Israel stuck somewhere in the middle. Essentially, it is an Islamic chess match for regional dominance which has already manifest in protracted proxy wars in both Syria and Yemen as well as diplomatic jockeying for power over Iraq and Qatar.
In this respect, according to Itzhak Levanon, a former Israeli ambassador to Egypt, “the Shiite axis, comprising Iran, Syria and [Iranian terror proxy] Hizbullah is expanding at the expense of the Sunni one, consisting of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others, including the Gulf States — and the only country that can stop this momentum is Israel. This is why the [latter] countries are seeking better relations.
“The Obama administration and the Europeans reached an arrangement with Tehran,” he explained to The Media Line, “and the Sunni states understand that the only voice in the world that has consistently been against this is Israel.”
Levanon, who also served as ambassador to the United Nations, stressed that while Israel’s ties with the Sunni axis will remain unofficial until such time that there is progress on the Palestinian issue, they are nevertheless “exceptional” and a positive development.
At the UN, regional leaders are currently gathering for the annual session of the General Assembly in New York, where many of them, including Netanyahu, have already met with U.S. President Donald Trump. Front and center in all sideline discussions, as well as in major speeches before the plenum, has been both Iran’s “nefarious” activities across the Middle East and the upcoming deadline for the White House to recertify that Tehran is in compliance with the nuclear deal.
To this end, Israel and Sunni Muslim countries are putting up a united front, with the aim of pressing the U.S. administration to either significantly revise the accord or tear it up completely, as was
promised by Candidate Trump. At the very least, such posturing could allow the anti-Iran bloc to extract various concessions or promises from the American president should he decide to preserve the agreement as is.
The age-old adage that ‘politics makes strange bedfellows’ applies in the case of the Israel-Sunni axis rapprochement; and perhaps too that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ However, today’s friendships can readily revert to animus tomorrow. After all, relations between countries have always been made—and broken—based on [con]temporary interests that are always fluid and fashioned inevitably by evolving conditions and developing strategic realities.
Case in point: the U.S. fought in tandem with the Soviets against the Nazis during World War II before nearly turning their nuclear weapons on each other during the Cold War not even two decades later.
Consequently, some quarters espouse cooperation by Jerusalem with whomever is willing to combat what it deems to be the primary dangers to the Jewish State, remaining all the while cognizant of the nature of such potential protagonists and partners.
This, they say, necessitates Israel building safeguards into its Iran and overall regional policies, even in the eventuality of the establishment of a direct flight between Tel Aviv and Manama.