THE Arab countries that began to normalise relations with Israel under pressure and direction from the Trump administration claim that this normalisation will not negatively affect the Palestinian cause and that it serves peace in the Middle East region.
    
However, this can only be so if we overlook the fact that this step comes in violation of all the decisions of the Arab summits, especially the Beirut summit, which launched the Arab Peace Initiative and which stipulated that a just solution to the Palestinian issue had to be on the basis of relevant United Nations resolutions. 

This was the key condition for the normalisation of relations between Arab countries and Israel. Israel has not made the slightest movement in this direction and hence technically and diplomatically these countries remained in a state of war with Israel until a peace treaty is agreed on United Nations terms. 

If, nonetheless, we forget all this, we still have to recognise that current developments in the region are of grave concern to Palestinians and should also be for the rest of the world. 

First, these Arab countries which have endorsed the Trump deal have exercised all forms of political and economic pressure on the Palestinian Authority to push it back to relations with the Israeli occupation as well as to accept Trump's deal. 

This is despite all the hostile steps taken by the US administration, the maintenance of the blockade against the Palestinian people and US support for all Israeli measures on the ground, especially its settlement and annexation of Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley and recognition of Israel's sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and its denial of the international legitimacy of United Nations decisions that validate the two-state solution.

Second, there is the speed with which these relations are developing under US sponsorship. There seems to be a race against time to include as many countries as possible before the end of Trump’s term. 

All forms of intimidation and incitement have been used. The most recent was Morocco which traded Palestinian support for Western Sahara. An Israeli newspaper even described the agreement as a recognition of the occupation in exchange for an occupation.

Third and most dangerous, these changes may not be restricted to diplomatic and economic relations only but represent a far more dangerous turn towards military and security operations.  

Some analysts believe they are moving to a military alliance between these countries and Israel under US sponsorship.

We need to go back a little to the period after the so-called Arab Spring, the emergence of the role of political Islam in the region, the increase in sectarian incitement, especially between Sunnis and Shi’ites, and the portrayal of Iran as the main enemy of the Arab countries and not Israel. The objective of this new alliance would be to bring together all the forces hostile to Iran and thus a  common enemy.