“This is one of the great days in the history of Sudan,” President Trump declared Friday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu added: “Today, Khartoum is saying yes to peace with Israel, yes to recognition of Israel and yes to normalization with Israel. This is a new era, an era of true peace — peace that is proceeding and widening with additional Arab countries. Three in the last few weeks.” It is indeed a new era. Could it even mark the end of the modern era of jihad?
In September, when Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates signed their deals with Israel, Trump stated: “We’re here this afternoon to change the course of history. After decades of division and conflict we mark the dawn of a new Middle East.” This was accurate. These “Abraham Accords” have already changed the entire landscape of the Middle East, as for the first time in decades, pragmatic considerations are taking precedence over the fixed ideas that have guided the foreign policy stances of all the Muslim and Arab countries regarding Israel.
Although this aspect of the conflict has been little noted and is still routinely ignored by foreign policy analysts, the Muslim world’s opposition to Israel has not been based upon conflicting claims for land or anything else, but upon core principles of the Islamic religion. As The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process
That means that as long as pious, believing, knowledgeable Muslims are in charge in Muslim countries, which is by no means always the case, no negotiated settlement will ever establish Israel securely and end the jihad against it. That in turn is why analysts ignore Islam when considering the conflict: people don’t like bad news, or problems that cannot be solved. Nonetheless, this is the reality of the situation, and no good can ever come from ignoring reality.
Why, then, did Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and now Sudan normalize relations with Israel? Because it was in their interests to do so. Sudan was taken off the terror list in exchange for normalization. The Islamic Republic of Iran has for years claimed Bahrain as Iran’s nineteenth province, and the UAE likewise feels the heat of being in close proximity to one of the world’s leading state sponsors of terror. In a certain sense, these deals with Israel are a byproduct of Barack Obama’s decision to send billions to the mullahs’ tottering regime: a newly secure and empowered mullahcracy threatens Bahrain and the UAE, and so it was in their best interests to look for assistance from a country that Iran also menaces.
Islamic law stipulates, based on the example of Muhammad’s Treaty of Hudaybiyya with the pagan Quraysh tribe, that truces can be made with non-Muslims for a period of ten years (although they can be extended if necessary) if the Muslim forces are weak and need time to gather strength. Muhammad broke the Treaty of Hudaybiyya when he no longer needed it, and that, too, is part of Islamic law for treaty-making with infidels: Muslims are bound to the agreement only as long as it is beneficial to them.
Do Sudanese, Bahraini and Emirati authorities regard their deals with Israel as akin to the Treaty of Hudaybiyya, which Yasir Arafat famously invoked to mollify enraged Muslims after concluding the Oslo Accords? The possibility cannot be discounted, and the Israelis would be foolhardy to proceed without bearing in mind Ronald Reagan’s old adage, Trust, but verify.
However, there are also numerous indications that many in the Islamic world have had quite enough of the Palestinians’ jihadist intransigence and resistance to all peace accords, and are willing to proceed on a pragmatic basis, quite aside from what Islamic doctrine and law say, in order to secure their own countries against the threat from Iran. And so in these agreements the Palestinians have been largely bypassed, and that is the brilliance of Trump’s move here: if the Palestinians won’t come to the table and make peace, he has chosen a path that no previous president and no previous negotiator has followed: leave the Palestinians to stew in their own rage and conclude agreements instead with other countries that are looking after their own interests.
Thus, even though these accords ignore the Islamic imperative of jihad and its deeply ingrained anti-Semitism, they are a tremendous source of hope for the future. As I have noted many, many times, what Islam teaches is one thing, and what any individual Muslim or Muslim group may do is quite another. In this case, Sudan, the UAE and Bahrain have demonstrated that their priorities are not to foster the growth of the jihad against Israel, and that’s all to the good. President Trump is to be commended for refusing to follow the advice of foreign policy “experts” who have failed again and again, and to strike out in a new direction. That’s a primary reason why the political elites hate him so much.
Article posted with permission from Robert Spencer
