The United Arab Emirates, apparently “outraged” that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has voiced his opposition to the sale of the state-of-the-art F-35 Stealth fighter jets to the Emirates, cancelled a public meeting that was to be held jointly with American and Israeli representatives. The story is here.
A planned public meeting between the UN ambassadors of Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the United States scheduled for last week was canceled by the UAE after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed opposition to a potential US-UAE arms deal.
According to an Axios report, US Ambassador to the UN Kelly Craft invited the Israeli and Emirati ambassadors to the meeting, which was meant to be a public show of goodwill following the announcement of a normalization accord by Israel and the UAE two weeks ago. It was intended to be held at the UN headquarters in New York.
However, after Netanyahu publicly voiced opposition to a proposed US-UAE arms deal in which the latter would receive the state-of-the-art F-35 fighter jet, thus potentially undermining Israel’s “qualitative military edge” in the Middle East, the UAE nixed the meeting indefinitely.
Axios reported that sources claimed the Emiratis had believed that the F-35 deal was part of the agreement to normalize relations with Israel, and Netanyahu’s public statements against it were seen as a violation of the accord. Furthermore, they were said to be outraged that Netanyahu had mentioned he would bring up the issue with members of the US Congress.
As a result, the UAE canceled the meeting in order to send a message to Israel. In addition, high-level public meetings will be postponed until the issue is resolved….
Reuters reported on Monday that at a press conference in Jerusalem, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pledged to preserve Israel’s regional military edge.
“The United States has a legal requirement with respect to qualitative military edge,” he said. “We will continue to honor that.”
This behavior by the UAE is not merely unpleasant, but outrageous. This “normalization of relations” that the UAE has said it is establishing with Israel no longer looks like what we all hoped – a Middle Eastern version of Rick and Captain Renaud walking off together into the night for what promises to be “the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” The UAE cannot have been surprised by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s expression of opposition to its purchase of the F-35 Stealth fighter jets. For decades it has been official American policy, enshrined in the law by Congress, to maintain Israel’s “qualitative military edge.” This QME is the first thing any arms-buying Arab state finds out about when it goes arms-shopping in Washington. The UAE has been trying for six years, by its own admission, to buy the F-35s; during all that time the American policy of QME has prevented any sale from going forward. As Secretary of State Pompeo said in Jerusalem, reminding the world, and the UAE, “the United States has a legal requirement with respect to [Israel’s] qualitative military edge.” Even if Pompeo wanted to sell the planes to the UAE, it’s out of his hands. If such a sale is deemed to violate the American commitment to maintain Israel’s QME, it will not go through.
The Emiratis claim to have been given to understand that the F-35 deal was an integral part of the agreement to normalize relations with Israel. Should we believe that? Was it anywhere stated in any of the back-and-forth communications, written and oral, between the three parties? Wasn’t it really a hope that the UAE on its own elevated to a promise, hoping it might be treated as such by Washington and Jerusalem, only to be disabused by Netanyahu’s objection to such a sale? The Israeli prime minister is now only doing what he had a duty to his country to do, which was to remind the Americans – if any needed reminding — that the QME policy was still in effect. As for the UAE’s outrage that Netanyahu mentioned that he would bring up the issue with members of Congress, why shouldn’t he have done so? Discussing the matter with Congress is exactly what Israel’s leader should be doing, because it is Congress that made the bipartisan commitment, a policy observed through many administrations – even that of Obama — to preserve Israel’s QME.
By refusing to attend a meeting with the American and Israeli ambassadors at the U.N., with its obvious symbolism, the UAE is doing itself no favors. It leaves an unsettled feeling among some of the very people who have been so enthusiastic about this supposedly new chapter in UAE-Israel relations. The UAE not only cancelled the meeting in order to send a very public message to Israel – it could, after all, have made its objections in private — but has also made it known that all other high-level public meetings with Israel will be postponed until the issue is resolved. By which the UAE surely means: “resolved to the UAE’s complete satisfaction.”
The UAE has armed itself to the hilt. It is one of the leading customers for American weaponry, and has bought billions of dollars worth. Israel has never objected to any of the other weaponry the UAE has bought from America. It continues to share intelligence with the UAE about Iran. It may even, in the future, sell its own advanced drones to the UAE. But the F-35 is a state-of-the-art game-changer that the Israeli military insists not be sold to any other MENA state.
The UAE sees the F-35s and an arms agreement with the US in general as essential to defending itself against Iranian aggression.
An “arms agreement” with the U.S., of course, with all sorts of weapons made available to the UAE, is one thing, but the F-35s are a QEM-destroying bridge too far. The UAE’s defense against Iranian aggression is best undertaken in close collaboration with the most powerful state in the region, that most effective enemy (from Stuxnet to Natanz) of Iran – Israel. Israel’s F-35s will be used to defend not only Israel against Iran, but if necessary, the UAE as well.
Besides, in that most volatile and violent part of the world, can Israel entrust its security to the continued existence in the UAE of the same regime? Can Israel be quite sure that those F-35s will never be used against it by the UAE? Israel well remembers that the two states that are most anti-Israel today, vociferous in their denunciation of the UAE’s “normalization of relations,” are Iran and Turkey. Under the Shah Iran was an ally of Israel. It was plied with weapons by the U.S. When the Shah fell, all that weaponry fell into the hands of Israel’s archenemy, the Khomeini regime. Before Erdogan came to power, Turkey was an ally of Israel. Under Erdogan, whose deep animus to Israel is clear, Turkey’s American weapons are now a threat to the Jewish state. Given that history, the Israelis cannot take a chance that if those F-35s are sold to the UAE, they will never be used against Israel.
The last word should go to the Israeli military, whose top brass and defense analysts are united in their opposition to the American sale of F-35s to the Emirates. “Israel must never forget, not even for a split second, that any dent in its strength is liable to pull the rug out from under its feet in the long term,” Amos Gilad, former head of the Defense Ministry’s political-military affairs bureau, wrote in the leading daily Yedioth Ahronoth on August 19. “It is imperative that Israel prevent the sale of F-35 planes to any country in the Middle East and that it reserves its capabilities and similar ones for itself.”