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LINES DRAWN FOR AND AGAINST ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN PEACE

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Hamas Chief Ismail Haniyeh attends a meeting with members of international media at his office in Gaza City, June 20, 2019 (Credit: Mohammed Salem, Reuters)

The new commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) made phone calls to the leaders of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) on Saturday to discuss united opposition to US President Trump’s “Deal of the Century”. The IRGC’s al-Quds force (named for their aspiration of “liberating” Jerusalem, or al-Quds in Arabic, from the State of Israel) has been a long-standing patron of both Hamas and PIJ, which are internationally recognized as terrorist organizations and are responsible for most terrorist attacks against Israel from the Gaza Strip. Iran’s leading ayatollahs have referred to the peace accord as a “shameful deal” and a “treacherous plan.”

On the same day, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Ankara to show his government’s solidarity with the jihadist group. Erdogan had called the proposed peace plan “unacceptable”. From Turkey, Haniyeh is travelling to Qatar, where he will reside for the foreseeable future. Both Turkey and Qatar are patrons of the Muslim Brotherhood, the parent organization of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. There is growing evidence that Turkey not only allows a safe haven for Hamas leadership in its borders, but uses the terror organization for the collection of intelligence and abets Hamas in plotting terrorism.

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Conversely, the Trump administration has begun a campaign to broker the normalization of relations between Israel and the moderate Arab states around it, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman and the UAE. The representatives of several Gulf states were present at Trump’s joint press conference with Israeli Premier Bibi Netanyahu when the plan was announced, and the Gulf foreign ministries have all published statements that are generally optimistic about the peace process within the Deal of the Century framework. The top priorities of this first round of detente are reported to be the formalization of non-belligerency pacts, freedom of air travel between Israel and the Arab states, and the exchange of dignitaries at diplomatic events.

Such developments signal a new order in the Middle East, where the axis of conflict has shifted from Israel vs the Muslim World (with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as its linchpin) to Israel, the US and the moderate Arab states vs Iran and its proxies.

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Gabriel Caligiuri