Over the last few days, two countries ‑ Morocco and Bhutan – have established relations with Israel. It seems more normalizations will come in the coming weeks before US President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20.
US Vice President Mike Pence is going to Israel and may announce that some other countries have forged diplomatic ties with Israel. It’s yet unclear which these countries are, but Saudi Arabia is not likely to be one of them. The Kingdom is expected to wait and see how things go with Biden administration before making any move.
Broadly, Biden favors the Abraham Accords, which have led to ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. He and his foreign policy advisers have said positive things about them. Still they likely to seek normalizations come in conjunction with progress in the peace process with Palestinians.
Biden administration may not pursue diplomatic ties for Israel and Arab countries with the same zeal as US President Donald Trump, but it would be unlikely to create any obstacles. Let no one forget these normalizations have strings attached that could be uncomfortable for the Biden administration.
Many senior Emirati figures, along with high-level Israeli and American officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have said that the sale of F-35 fighter jets to the UAE was not part of the negotiations leading to the Abraham Accords.
That sale just squeaked by a Senate bill aiming to block it, but whether it will be completed before Trump leaves office is unclear. Biden could oppose the sale because many Democrats in the Senate are concerned about UAE’s involvement in the wars in Yemen and Libya.
Sudan is keen in getting off the US list of state sponsors of terrorism, seeks debt forgiveness and aid after Omar al-Bashir was overthrown last year. The US insisted that diplomatic relations with Israel be part of the deal and Sudan pushed for “legal peace,” by which Khartoum will pay over US$300 million to victims of terror, and no further lawsuits can be brought against the country for its past support for terrorism.
This, too, faced obstacles in Congress, though supporting Sudan’s nascent democracy has bipartisan support. Senators Robert Menendez and Chuck Schumer seeking to carve out an exception for victims of the 9/11 attacks, among others, to sue Sudan, which harbored Osama bin Laden and hosted Al Qaeda training camps in the 1990s.
Sudanese officials have told US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that they will not move forward with ties with Israel if the bill granting Khartoum immunity from future lawsuits does not pass by the end of 2020.
In the meantime, an Israeli economic delegation has already been to Sudan, and Israel has been lobbying Congress to pass the legal immunity bill, without taking a position on 9/11 victims. Sudan may not stop the normalization process, because Israel can help the East African country in Washington.
Democrats do not generally oppose the “legal peace” for Sudan, even though details must still be worked out, and Biden has not said anything to indicate he would block it. Yet the matter is unlikely to be at the top of his agenda if it is not done by 20th January 2021, and those delays could be a strain on the new Sudan-Israel ties.
Morocco is perhaps the most controversial move of all three. The US became the first country to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. The Trump administration’s message was that decades of attempts at negotiations between Morocco and the leadership of the Sahrawi, the non-Moroccan people living in the region, have gone nowhere and autonomy under Morocco’s king is the way to move forward.
This has serious implications when it comes to international law that can radiate outward to Judea and Samaria, Crimea and beyond – as different as those land disputes may be – and the Trump administration has boxed Biden into a change of policy.
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