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If the end of Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12-year reign as prime minister is a political earthquake within Israel, its tremors clearly stop at Israel’s borders.
The political drama has hardly elicited a disregard from Israel’s Arab neighbors, who do not expect it to lead to substantive changes on the issues that concern them – namely, Israel’s approach to the Palestinians or to the wider Middle East.
“It’s really not being talked about or thought about,” said Ilham Fakhro, senior analyst for Gulf states at the International Crisis Group. “For those who care about the Palestinian side, they see that every Israeli government is the same, and they feel that the occupation will continue regardless and it doesn’t matter whose face it is.”
Netanyahu’s long tenure as the dominant politician in Israel has seen shifts in Israel’s relations with the Arabs. The peace process with the Palestinians has stalled. Israel has escalated its shadow war against Iran by regularly bombing targets linked to its allies in Syria. Working with former President Donald J. Trump, Israel reached new agreements to establish diplomatic relations with four Arab countries, helping to erode what had long been considered an Arab consensus against dealing with the Jewish state.
But few in the Arab world expect any of that to change now that Mr. Netanyahu is replaced at the head of the Israeli government.
The new prime minister, Naftali Bennett, is at least as hostile to the idea of a Palestinian state as Mr. Netanyahu. And there are no indications that any of the parties to the agreements with the four Arab countries, which began with the so-called Ibrahim agreements with the Emirates and Bahrain, and were followed by similar deals with Sudan and Morocco, is considering throwing them away. out.
Abdul Khaleq Abdullah, a professor of political science in the United Arab Emirates, said, “The Ibrahim agreements are not Netanyahu’s agreement. They are not even an agreement with Israel. It is an agreement led by the Emirates and will outlast Netanyahu or any Israeli prime minister.”
He continued, “The Ibrahim agreements are here to stay, and this is a good thing for the United Arab Emirates, for Israel, and for America.”
Mr. Abdullah said Netanyahu’s departure could actually make the deal easier, because the prime minister has long been widely seen as arrogant and arrogant.
“It is good that he is leaving the agreement,” Abdullah said, adding that it was difficult for Mr. Netanyahu to visit Abu Dhabi, the UAE capital.
Large parts of the population in many Arab countries still oppose Israel’s existence or strongly oppose its blockade of the Gaza Strip, which it imposes with Egypt, and its decades-old occupation of the West Bank. This gives them little interest in Israel’s domestic politics because significant changes in those policies are not on the table.
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