How are we to understand the meaning of Jerusalem Day, when we commemorate the reunification of our historical capital? In 1997, I served as Israel's ambassador to the United Nations and I asked for instruction from our foreign minister, at the time, Ariel Sharon. He sent me back to the speech of our first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, gave to the Knesset on Dec. 5, 1949.

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Ben Gurion was taking a historical decision at the end of the first Arab-Israeli War. He decided to move Israel's capital from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Ben Gurion was told by Israel's closest friends not to undertake this move. According to UN General Assembly Resolution 181, Jerusalem was supposed to be a "separate entity" – a corpus separatum in the language of the UN.

But what occurred in the war was that Jerusalem was surrounded by a coalition of Arab armies and bombarded by their artillery. The Jewish Quarter of the Old City was ethnically cleansed. Its great synagogues, some dating back to the 13th century were leveled. What the war had proven was that if Jerusalem would not be under Israel's sovereignty and protection, the consequences would be catastrophic. Ben Gurion told the Knesset:

 "But for our successful stand against aggressor's activity in defiance of the United Nations, Jewish Jerusalem would have been annihilated and the State of Israel would never have arisen."

Ben Gurion had a message to the world about Jerusalem:

 "The people which has faithfully honored for 2,500 years to the oath sworn by the first exiles by the Rivers of Babylon, not to forget Jerusalem – this people will never reconcile itself with separation from Jerusalem."

In the last decade with religious sites under assault across the Middle East, another aspect of Israel's control of Jerusalem has become clear. Only a free and democratic Israel will protect Jerusalem for all the great faiths. From 1948 to 1967, the Jewish people were denied access to their historical capital city. Yom Yerushalyim is a day in which that wrong was corrected and Jerusalem was made whole once more.

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The crisis over Ukraine in 2022 has illustrated just how important the diversification of the sources of European gas had become and the urgency of finding alternatives to Russian gas, if only to reduce Moscow's leverage over Europe and the NATO alliance. The EU Foreign Policy Chief, Josep Borrell, was able to voice a united policy for Europe, already in January 2022, before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, based on his view that "we must reduce our dependency on Russian energy."

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In late 2021, roughly 40 percent of the EU's natural gas imports came from Russia. The Russians worked systematically to create this situation. They even proposed to the previous German chancellor, Gerhard Schroder, a position in their national energy company, Gazprom. In early March, President Joe Biden announced a ban on Russian oil and gas imports into the United States. The EU announced, in response, that it planned to reduce its imports of Russian natural gas by two-thirds by the end of 2022.

While Washington sought alternative sources of energy products from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, they declined to help at this stage given the Biden administration's policy on the Yemen War. Currently, other suppliers to Europe, by pipeline include Norway (22%), Algeria (18%) and Azerbaijan (9%), but they cannot provide a substitute for Russian Gas.

Coming up with a solution to the Russian gas question for Europe also has an Israeli angle. Russia ranks first in the world in the size of its natural gas with 35 trillion cubic meters. It is followed by Iran and Qatar. The Eastern Mediterranean, as a whole, including Israel, has immense gas reserves that have been estimated to reach 10.8 trillion cubic meters of gas or roughly 5 percent of the world's gas reserves. This amount of gas has been estimated to be roughly equivalent to 76 years of gas consumption by the EU.

If we just focus on Israel's portion of the Eastern Mediterranean reserves, it alone amounts to 1,000 billion cubic meters, which could reach 3,000 billion cubic meters in the future, if all of Israel's economic waters are explored and exploited.

The new Israeli government headed by Prime Minister Bennett, unfortunately, modified Israeli energy policy; the Israeli Minister of Energy, Karine Elharrar, appeared to be adopting some of the preferences of the US renewable energy industry. Indeed, she halted the granting of licenses for natural gas exploration for one year while her ministry devoted its efforts to work on renewable energy.

Despite the postponement of Israel's gas pipeline to Europe by the Biden administration, for reasons that are not entirely clear, Israeli gas is still used for its Middle Eastern partners, particularly Egypt and Jordan. For the last decade, Iran has been seeking to export its gas to Iraq and even Jordan, thereby extending its influence to Israel's east.

With the anticipated improvement of Israeli ties to Turkey, Ankara could emerge as an export hub for Israeli gas in the future. Thus, in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine, there are multiple reasons why the work on the East Med pipeline must be resumed along with gas exploration in the Eastern Mediterranean as soon as possible. Moreover, increasing the supply of gas to the West will also help drive down its price, thereby undermining Russia's ability to fund its war machine in the future.

The war in Europe is expected to accelerate these changes and bring Israel into new alliance systems. There is already a new coalition with the participation of India, the UAE and the United States which includes Israel and is known as "the Quad". One cannot rule out the possibility that Turkey together with European states, will join this new structure and the issue of energy can provide a common denominator for its members. Thus, the Israeli gas is a significant strategic factor and should not be dismissed or overlooked.

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In a stunning statement last Friday in which he defended his withdrawal decision, President Joe Biden claimed that Al-Qaida was "gone" from Afghanistan. The glaring problem with that claim is that Biden did not have the backing of the American security establishment to make it. An hour after Biden spoke, Defense Department Press Secretary John Kirby stated, "We know Al-Qaida is a presence in Afghanistan."

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A Defense Department report to Congress issued on Aug. 17 plainly states, "The Taliban continued to maintain its relationship with Al-Qaida, providing safe haven for the terrorist group in Afghanistan." Roughly at the same time, the Taliban released 5,000 prisoners from Bagram airbase, which included Al-Qaida and Islamic State operatives.

Nor was there a consensus on this issue within what had been the Western alliance. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned that Western states needed to unite to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a sanctuary for international terrorist organizations. There were regular reports from the United Nations Security Council that looked at this question as well. In the twelfth report of its monitoring team, it is established that "a significant part of the leadership of Al-Qaida resides in the Afghanistan and Pakistan border region."

The Al-Qaida presence was not confined to the borders alone. The report continues: "Large numbers of Al-Qaida fighters and other foreign extremist elements aligned with the Taliban are located in various parts of Afghanistan." It also makes clear that these were not peripheral elements of Al-Qaida but rather its "core leadership."

Britain's defense minister, Ben Wallace, also asserted that Al-Qaida "will probably come back." He makes reference to a U.N. report that states Al-Qaida is present in 15 of Afghanistan's provinces. He also is aware of the fact that many in the West see Afghanistan as a "failed state," and notes that failed states have a propensity to become headquarters for terrorist groups.

The director of Britain's domestic intelligence agency, MI5, warned in July that Al-Qaida would seek to re-establish its training facilities in Afghanistan if the opportunity opened up. Allies of German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the Bundestag condemned Biden's decision to rapidly withdraw from Afghanistan.

So what was motivating the new US drive to accelerate the military withdrawal? Many in Washington made reference to the agreement between the Taliban and the Trump administration from February 2020 on the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Afghanistan.

However, the agreement made the withdrawal dependent upon the implementation by the Taliban of its commitment to not allow Al-Qaida to use Afghan territory against American forces. Part Two of the agreement contains a commitment by the Taliban "to prevent any group or individual, including Al-Qaida, from using the soil of Afghanistan to threaten the security of the United States or its allies."

There also was an underlying assumption that was common in the West. Withdrawal, it was hoped would reduce the hostility of the Taliban and their allies. But this was a misinterpretation of what motivated jihadist groups. Al-Qaida formally came into existence after the Soviet Union pulled out from Afghanistan and they felt vindicated. Withdrawals across the Middle East strengthened the motivation of these groups. Indeed, the UN report to the Security Council, submitted in June 2021, plainly stated that "despite expectations for a reduction in violence, 2020 (the year of the US-Taliban agreement on withdrawal) emerged as the most violent year ever recorded by the United Nations in Afghanistan…"

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The Israeli experience was identical: when the IDF unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip, in accordance with the Disengagement plan of the Israeli government, Hamas won the Palestinian elections and took over the Gaza Strip from Fatah. Rocket attacks on Israel, after the Gaza withdrawal, increased by 500%. To defeat the jihadist forces it was necessary to accompany withdrawal with actions that left no doubt that what happened was a defeat for them. But it does not seem that President Biden will pursue such a strategy, leaving the West with an empowered Al-Qaida to fight against in the years ahead.

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People forget that when the International Criminal Court was created in 1998, through the Rome Statute, the Clinton administration ordered the US delegation to vote against its formation. Later, after deciding to sign the statute, the administration still refused to submit it to the Senate for ratification. President Bush took Clinton's advice in this regard and held back from seeking Senate support.

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Washington had rightfully backed the overall idea of denying war criminals impunity. After all, the 1990s had been a horrible decade for human rights. Two cases of genocide had transpired in Bosnia and Rwanda. There was another case in Darfur in western Sudan. The institutions of the United Nations had done nothing to prevent these actions. The establishment of the ICC was supposed to change all that. It didn't. Perhaps there was a sense right from the start that the ICC might not work out.

In fact, over the next two decades, the ICC repeatedly failed to fulfill its mission to protect human rights. Take, for example, its decision to do nothing about the crimes of Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria and Iraq. True, neither state was a member of the ICC, for neither signed the Rome Statute that would give the court jurisdiction. In April 2015, ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda issued a statement that there was nothing she could do about ISIS, despite all the reports of mass executions, torture and the wanton destruction of religious properties.

Bensouda had not been motivated to explore the implications of the fact that ISIS comprised volunteers from states that were signatories to the ICC statute. Had there been a will, there could have been a way. But the political will was clearly absent. It was noteworthy that Bensouda issued a statement that her office believed Boko Haram had committed crimes against humanity in Nigeria.

Still, the ICC did not serve as a factor in halting some of the most serious alleged abuses of human rights in recent years. It has not ordered an investigation of the assault on the Uighur minority in China, including their forcible mass transfer. It might be argued that China is a superpower, but that has not held the ICC back from moving against the United States over its military's actions in Afghanistan. ICC prosecutions fell apart in several high-profile legal actions over the last decade in Kenya, the Central African Republic and the Ivory Coast.

Despite its flaws and past performance, the ICC has demonstrated striking determination to pursue legal actions against the State of Israel. But in these cases the ICC runs into a wall it fails to consider. For any legal process to proceed, the establishment of its jurisdiction is a prerequisite.

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But if there is no Palestinian state that can delegate to the ICC its criminal jurisdiction, then the jurisdiction of the ICC is a real problem. As Israel's Deputy Attorney General for International Law, Roy Schondorf, points out, seven states have submitted their view that the ICC has no jurisdiction in this case, including Germany, Australia, Canada, Brazil, Hungary, Uganda, Austria and the Czech Republic.

Bensouda's predecessor, Louis Morano Ocampo, stressed in an interview last week that when he was the ICC prosecutor, his organization did not agree to recognize the Palestinians' territorial jurisdiction because no Palestinian state existed. One doesn't exist now, either.

Israel must resist these efforts to turn the ICC into a political weapon. An ICC indictment might have the aura of international law, but Israel must not allow these moves at the ICC – which are essentially political – to undercut its own self-assurance about the fundamental justice underpinning its cause.

Features on JNS.org, this article was first published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

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Many of us in Israel are in a state of both shock and deep sadness about the loss of Sheldon. The fact is that those of us who knew him understood how deep his love was for both the US and for Israel.

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He understood what nations like ours needed to survive. And he always wanted to know what he could personally do. He knew that we were both engaged in a war of ideas. If hostile ideas prevailed, we would all be in danger.

You might remember that when we started to work together in 2000, the Camp David Summit had just collapsed. It had proposed dividing Jerusalem and pushing Israel back to the 1967 lines.

The Clinton team sought to preserve the Camp David legacy of Israeli concessions. With Sheldon's backing, we insisted on Israel's right to "defensible borders" and to a united Jerusalem. He could enter the White House and would not be intimidated. He knew what needed to be done.

I believe what Sheldon stood for will live on. And it is our duty to make sure that happens. I know for a fact that you walked with him hand in hand, with one purpose in mind: the survival and strengthening of Israel.

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Of course, for you and the inner family, this is a very personal loss and I share your pain. Looking from the outside, it is the loss of a giant of our times.

He was a hero of the Jewish people at a time when there are too few heroes. He will be sorely missed by me.

Dr. Dore Gold is the president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and the former director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

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For much of the modern era, the Arab world has sought ways to provide legitimacy to its political leadership. That led it down the road of highly ideological politics based on promoting Arab unity schemes even with the use of force, experimenting with Arab socialist doctrines, and maintaining at all costs the Arab-Israel conflict.

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A few brave leaders were prepared to break with this paradigm and reached peace with Israel, such as President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, and King Hussein of Jordan. Most recently King Hamad of Bahrain and Sheikh Zayed of the UAE have joined. Peace with Israel was not a risk-free strategy and some of these leaders' enemies were prepared to threaten them with assasination attempts and increased political turmoil. But they persisted nonetheless in the path of peace.

Now King Muhammad VI has bravely moved the Kingdom of Morocco into the circle of states making formal peace with Israel. It is a move that is not without risks for the Moroccans. The security challenges that they face primarily emanate from the area of the former Spanish colony of the Western Sahara, where an insurgency campaign is being waged by guerrillas from the Polisario front against the Moroccan security forces, with the support of Algeria. Morocco had valid claims to this disputed teerritory; many tribes in the area had been historically linked to the Moroccan monarchy.

The stakes in this conflict were considerable. The Polisario, who are also backed by the Iranian regime, also seek to undermine the territorial integrity of Morocco itself. In 2018, Morocco presented documents to the Iranian government proving that Tehran was now arming and training the Polisario with the help of Hizbullah; these included shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles like the SAM-9 and SAM-11. As a result of this material, Morocco cut its diplomatic ties with Iran. It turned out that the Iranians were using their embassy in Algiers as a conduit to the Polisario.

This was part of a pattern that the Iranians were following in Africa-seeking to infiltrate the continent by backing military moves of allies they sought to cultivate. In late 2019, the UN obtained photographs of weapons used by Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army that included anti-tank guided missiles which were believed to be Iranian-made weapons. The Iranians also sought to promote the conversion of African Sunnis to Shiism, which exacerbated the tensions between Tehran and a number to Sunni states. Sheikh Yousuf al-Qaradhawi, a spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood, charged in the local press in a number of countries that Iran was seeking to infiltrate Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco.

There were several lessons for the West from these episodes. First, it was clear that the Polisario, far from being a national liberation movement deserving global backing, were emerging as an organization that had no problem linking itself to the terrorist network Iran had established across the Middle East and Africa. What would the Western powers do? They did not have to send their air forces to North Africa. But they could deny the Polisario their diplomatic goals.

After Syria hosted Iranian proxy forces in large numbers, the US issued a proclamation in March 2019 recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. After the Polisario decided to work with Iran, an equivalent move of recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara made perfect sense. It was extremely important to send a message to other players as well.

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It was a strategy that was working. Already Bahrain, Jordan, and the UAE all had spoken about opening up a Moroccan consulate on the territory of the Western Sahara. South Africa's President, Cyril Ramaphosa, distanced his country from Polisario claims. It was significant given the fact that South Africa,besides being the most powerful country in Africa, also held the presidency of the African Union. If the US wished to reinforce political moderation across the region and weaken the axis of extremism then reinforcing Morocco's position on the Sahara issue was a wise approach to follow. That logic helped lead to the birth of the Moroccan Sahara.

The connection between peacemaking efforts now being pursued by Israel and Morocco and the situation in the Western Sahara is not complicated. When the voices of Arab moderation are secured, peace can become a reality. But if Iran enters undisturbed, then any peace can be undermined. The resolve of the US and its allies can make all the difference in setting the stage for a new era in the Middle East.

Dr. Dore Gold is the President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He served as Director-General of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its ambassador to the United Nations.

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The recent decision of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to sign a peace treaty with Israel should not have come as a complete surprise. For the UAE has stood out as one of the most stable Arab states and a key ally of the West as a whole.

Against the turbulent developments in much of the Arab world emanating from what is called the Arab Spring, the UAE looks like an island of stability. Indeed, this is an attribute in which the UAE leadership takes pride.

In 2011, the country's leading think tank, the Abu Dhabi-based Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR), asserted that the UAE had become "a model of political stability at the regional and global levels." To prove its point, the think tank, which is headed by Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, made reference to a recent report by Bank of America/Merrill Lynch that ranked the UAE as one of the most immune countries to political risks in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Africa.

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There have been individuals who have protested for more political liberties in the UAE, in the spirit of the early Arab Spring. Pro-democracy activists were put on trial in June 2011. These cases received international attention, but never turned into a movement that threatened to bring down the government. The country's leadership did not loosen up its instruments of control: it continued to make the formation of political parties a violation of the law. Some professional associations were disbanded. The UAE government was willing to absorb international criticism when it closed down democracy promotion initiatives sponsored by Western governments, like the National Democratic Institute in Dubai and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, allied with German Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling party. The UAE remained stable and continued to be exceptional in the Middle East region.

There are structural reasons that can explain the UAE's special status at present. Across the Arab state system, those societies in which no particular ethnographic-religious group is demographically dominant have been the most vulnerable to internal convulsions since 2011. Thus, Iraq, with its amalgam of Sunni Arabs, Shi'ite Arabs and Kurds, and Syria, with its combination of Alawites, Druze, Sunni Arabs and Christians, have been the states in which the breakdown of internal order has been most violent. In contrast, in Saudi Arabia, Sunni Arabs constitute 85 to 90 percent of the population, while in Jordan an estimated 97 percent of the population are Sunni. Neither of these kingdoms has experienced what went on in Iraq and Syria.

In past decades, prevailing internal groups, like the Sunnis in Iraq or the Alawites in Syria, were able to sustain their positions of political dominance with the assistance of an external force, like the Soviet bloc, which helped run the security services in those countries, thus ensuring a high degree of internal control. The collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s contributed to the challenge faced by these regimes. In the Persian Gulf, this role was largely assumed during the colonial period by Great Britain. But by 1972, Great Britain withdrew from the Gulf region, after controlling the external policies of the Gulf sheikhdoms, which had been British protectorates. From Kuwait down to Oman, the British left behind only small teams of advisers. These were sometimes reinforced by small contingents of Jordanian forces engaged in military training.

Abu Dhabi dominates the UAE

Where does the UAE stand in light of what has been going on in the Middle East? The UAE is a federation of seven hereditary mini-states, led by Abu Dhabi. It is surrounded by larger and more powerful neighbors, like Iran and Saudi Arabia, which have threatened its territorial integrity in the past. One striking demographic feature is that only 11% of the UAE population are actually citizens of the country. Foreign workers that come mainly from the Indian subcontinent make up around 50 percent of the workforce. Thus, a significant portion of the population is ethnically alienated from the leadership, which is of Arab origin.

Since the main minority groups are completely outside the UAE political system, the main potential source for internal rifts comes from any threat to the federal structure. Each federal emirate is led by different tribal families: the Al Nahyan lead Abu Dhabi, the Al Maktoum control Dubai, different branches of the Al Qassimi are the leaders of Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah (also known as the Qawasim states), the Al Nuiami lead in Ajman, the Al Sharqi are the leaders of Fujairah, and finally the Al Mu'alla are the leaders of Umm al-Qaywayn. Abu Dhabi is the largest of the emirates by far. Its geographic area is 26,000 square miles – accounting for 88 percent of the entire area of the UAE – while that of Dubai, the second largest emirate, is only 1,500 square miles. (By comparison, Kuwait has an area of 6,880 square miles.) Among the smallest emirates, Ajman has an area of only 100 square miles.

What perhaps explains the continuing cohesion of the UAE is that there is one emirate, Abu Dhabi, which dominates the federal government and whose relative size and wealth make it extremely difficult for the lesser emirates to break off, even though historically these lesser emirates were in a perpetual state of war with one another, particularly Abu Dhabi and the Qawasim states.

Nevertheless, despite these structural features that contribute to the UAE's stability, it is imperative to examine other threats the UAE faces and to consider the potential impact of these risk factors in the future. They include the external threat of its most dangerous hegemonic neighbor, the Islamic Republic of Iran; the internal threat posed by Islamist groups, like the Islamic State, or any related jihadist organizations, and tensions that have arisen from time to time with its fellow Arab neighbors in the Persian Gulf.

The Iranian threat

Iran is the principal external threat to the security of the UAE, by virtue of its self-defined role as the predominant power in the Persian Gulf. Even before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Shah of Iran sent forces in 1971 to seize the Greater and Lesser Tunb Islands from Ras al-Khaimah. Iran also pressed the emirate of Sharjah to share with it control of the island of Abu Musa. All three islands were situated near the Strait of Hormuz, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. Control of these territories improved Iran's ability to exercise its domination of that strategic waterway and the movement of energy resources for the West that flowed through it. With the completion of the formation of the UAE in 1972, the Iranian occupation of the islands of individual emirates became a direct challenge to the federation as a whole.

Iranian motivation to take control of these territories only intensified with the fall of the Shah and the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini. The new Iranian constitution, promulgated in 1979, explicitly backed the idea of exporting the Islamic revolution. Practically, that meant Iran began targeting Middle Eastern states with large Shi'ite minorities that felt oppressed by their Sunni rulers. The Iranians were especially active in Bahrain, which had a Shi'ite majority under a Sunni king. There was also a Shi'ite majority in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, which is also the location of the large Saudi oil fields. Branches of the Lebanese Shi'ite terrorist group Hezbollah were established in both states. Although only 25 percent of Kuwait was Shi'ite, the Iranians recruited Shi'ite operatives who engaged in acts of terrorism with the help of their Lebanese compatriots.

During the period of the Shah, Iran agreed that the island of Abu Musa should be under the joint administration of the UAE and Iran. But by 1992, Tehran evicted the UAE and kept the island under its exclusive control. While the Shah abandoned his claims to Bahrain, which had been under Persian rule for two centuries beginning in 1602, Iranian claims were renewed by well-connected newspaper columnists who wrote that Bahrain was really the 14th province of Iran.

The editor of the religiously conservative Iranian newspaper Kayhan, which is tied to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wrote in July 2007 that the governments of all the Gulf states know that they will sooner or later witness "the collapse of their illegal regimes." An Iranian member of parliament followed this statement with his own observation that most of the Arab states "were once part of Iranian soil, when [Iran] stretched from Egypt to Syria."

Iranian leaders have shown no reluctance to visit Abu Musa. In April 2012, former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited the island and met with its residents. A month later, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) also visited Abu Musa.

A critical factor that will influence the scale of the Iranian threat on the UAE is its defense cooperation with the United States. Both countries signed a Defense Cooperation Agreement in 1994, after which the US military presence in the UAE greatly expanded, particularly around the 2003 American invasion of Iraq. Roughly 5,000 US servicemen are deployed in various facilities in the UAE. Near Abu Dhabi, the United States uses the Al Dhafra air base, which has been proven to be critical for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The base continued to be used for major combat operations against ISIS in the last few years. The United States also uses naval facilities at the Jebel Ali port, which is situated between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Fujairah provides the US Navy with key facilities outside of the Persian Gulf.

These facilities have a dual role as far as Iran is concerned. On the one hand, the presence of such a large American military contingent enhances the UAE's deterrence posture vis-a-vis the Iranian military. In this scenario, the US military presence is like a tripwire: an armed attack on Abu Dhabi that led to US fatalities would likely bring about a massive American retaliation against Iran.

On the other hand, should Iran decide that its hegemony in the Persian Gulf is dependent upon forcing an eventual American withdrawal from the region, then the US military presence could be a lightning rod attracting Iranian action. This was the Iranian consideration when it employed Lebanese Shi'ites to attack the US Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. Iran seeks to utilize Shi'ite minorities across the Middle East in order to advance its strategic interests, whether through acts of terror or larger civilian revolts.

The place where this consideration might eventually cause Iranian action is Bahrain, which hosts the naval headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet. Iranian Shi'ite protests regularly call for the United States to withdraw its base from Bahrain. As noted, there is a Bahrain branch of Hezbollah which security forces have identified. The situation is different in the UAE, but analogies nonetheless might be drawn. Instead of there being a population of 70 or 80 percent Shi'ites, there are estimates that roughly 25 percent of the UAE population are Shi'ites. But the concern in the UAE has focused on families of Iranian origin who are represented in large numbers in Dubai (as many as 400,000). It has deported small numbers of foreign Shi'ites and revoked their residency, claiming that these actions were taken for security reasons.

In the meantime, relations between the UAE and Iran have deteriorated further. Acting in solidarity with Saudi Arabia, the UAE withdrew its ambassador from Tehran in January 2016. That same month, Iranian protesters sacked the Saudi embassy and Riyadh broke off diplomatic relations with Tehran. The widening rift with Tehran expressed itself in another way: a harsher policy on Hezbollah. The UAE issued a joint declaration with its fellow Gulf Cooperation Council states determining that Hezbollah was a terrorist organization. While this point was debated in European capitals, in the UAE the policy was clear.

Iran's readiness to challenge the UAE because of these issues or escalate to military confrontation ultimately will be influenced by the UAE's alliances, particularly with the United States. The UAE leadership felt exposed during the Obama era, when the United States was pulling back from the Middle East. Today, given the profile of the Trump team, US deterrence of local aggression by Iran should be enhanced.

The internal Sunni jihadist threat

The UAE has taken measures to reduce its vulnerability to internal Islamist challenges. In order to understand these measures, it is useful to draw a comparison with the situation in Saudi Arabia, which has experienced attacks from Al-Qaeda and ISIS since 9/11. The Saudi system of governance was founded on the basis of a political alliance from the 18th century between the Saudi royal family, who were the descendants of Muhammad bin Saud, and the country's religious leadership, who were descendants of Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab, founder of the Wahhabi tradition within Sunni Islam. The Saudis were obligated to defend the promulgators of the Wahhabi doctrine and, in exchange, the religious leaders legitimized the continuing rule of the Saudi royal family.

This royal bargain meant that the Saudis had an internal political interest in sustaining the religious doctrines of the state's religious leaders, even if they were often far more severe than mainstream Sunni Islam. As a result, Saudi Arabia became an incubator for some of the most hardline religious practices found in the Islamic world. For a time, Saudi Arabia also provided sanctuary to radical Islamic groups that were oppressed at home; in the 1960s Saudi Arabia provided a haven for leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood that were being jailed by Egyptian president Abdul Nasser. They were employed at Saudi universities (they became instructors to Osama bin Laden). Given this background, it should have come as no surprise that 15 out of 19 of the 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. In comparison, only two of the 19 came from the UAE.

The UAE political leadership did not form the same kind of bond with the clerical class in any of the emirates. Public opinion in the UAE would not support the creation of such a relationship, either. In his book The Mirage, Jamal Sanad al-Suwaidi, the director of the ECSSR, reports a survey conducted in the UAE during 2014 in which it was asked whether clerics should not have influence over decisions of the government. The survey found that 72.6% of the respondents agreed that clerics should not have such influence. By comparison, only 47% agreed with this proposition in Saudi Arabia, and in Jordan the number was 48%.

In short, public opinion in the UAE was strongly against the emergence of any form of a theocratic state, which helped put the brakes on support for radical Islamic organizations. The UAE has established that the Muslim Brotherhood and its local offshoot, Islah (which means Reform), are terrorist organizations. UAE courts closed down all branches of the Muslim Brotherhood in early 2014. These policies have contributed to the strength of moderate political forces in the UAE as a whole.

In contrast, Qatar permitted these groups to set up offices and even headquarters. The Taliban and Hamas had offices in Doha. What was alleged to have been an Israeli operation against a senior Hamas operative in a hotel in Dubai during 2010 was indicative of the fact that the UAE had permitted the organization to move through its territory. For a time, Hamas also engaged in fundraising in Abu Dhabi, but it did not have the infrastructure there it had become accustomed to in Qatar.

The position of the UAE on the Muslim Brotherhood actually brought it into direct clashes with the movement's local affiliate in Libya. Thus, in August 2014, UAE aircraft carried out a joint air strike with the Egyptian Air Force against a radical Islamic militia, backed by Qatar, in Libya. The UAE also conducted air strikes in Syria against radical Islamist groups. The UAE committed an armored brigade to the war in Yemen. These were courageous positions, for in the world of Middle East terrorism, organizations that found measures taken against them to be unacceptable were known to have retaliated in the past.

While the Jan. 10, 2017, bomb attack in Kandahar, Afghanistan, killing five UAE diplomats, was relatively recent, it can be assessed that the hard line of the UAE on jihadist groups increased the vulnerability of its representatives abroad. The attack was assumed by observers to have come out of Taliban-influenced areas of Pakistan. Prior to 9/11, both Saudi Arabia and the UAE had diplomatic ties with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Since that time, both pulled back from engaging in such close relations.

Tensions with Arab neighbors

It is often forgotten, but the states along the Arabian coast of the Persian Gulf had significant territorial differences in the past that have not all been resolved. The most famous of these territorial struggles was over an area known as the al-Buraymi Oasis, which is located between Oman and Abu Dhabi, but to which Saudi Arabia has also voiced its claim. In the early 1950s there was a military clash between the British-officered Trucial Oman Scouts and Saudi forces. There was an international dimension to the struggle since the main oil concession in eastern Saudi Arabia (ARAMCO) was American and the main concession in Abu Dhabi (a subsidiary of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company) was British. The question of territorial borders influenced the borders between oil concessions.

The differences between Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi were eventually resolved by using territorial swaps: Abu Dhabi relinquished its claim to the Khwar Udaid inlet where the Qatari peninsula connects with the Arabian coast. But the UAE president at the time, Sheikh Zayed, had regrets over the understanding reached: the UAE lost its territorial contiguity with Qatar. Moreover, controversies over the control of the Persian Gulf seabed remained. Thus, the tensions between the UAE and Saudi Arabia were not fully resolved. This led sometimes to unexpected clashes. In 2010, for example, the UAE Navy opened fire on a Saudi patrol vessel, which surrendered; its sailors were taken into custody by Abu Dhabi. Moreover, there is a perception in Abu Dhabi that it does not have the full backing of Saudi Arabia for its claims against Iran's occupation of Abu Musa and the two Tunb islands.

In the last number of years, despite their outstanding differences, the two countries have grown closer, especially as they both became involved deeply on the same side in the Yemen civil war. The connection between the two states has been facilitated by the rise of a new generation of leaders who have drawn close. Muhammad bin Zayed (born in 1961), the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, reportedly has developed a strong relationship with Mohammed bin Salman (born in 1985), the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. The crown prince of Abu Dhabi has become in some respects the crown prince of Saudi Arabia's tutor.

Internal issues

The greatest source of instability in the Arab Gulf states has been the matter of succession. In Qatar, the previous emir staged a coup against his father. In Oman, as well, the previous ruler, Sultan Qaboos, overthrew his father, Said bin Taimur. In the case of Abu Dhabi, while Mohammed bin Zayed is the next in line to become the UAE president, he is already assuming many of those responsibilities. His brother, Khalifa bin Zayed, the current president, suffered a stroke in January 2014, which left Mohammed bin Zayed beginning to take over many functions of the presidency. This follows a pattern that was seen in Saudi Arabia when King Fahd was incapacitated and his crown prince, Abdullah, became the effective ruler until Fahd died and then Abdullah was formally promoted to the throne. In the UAE case, the assumption of greater authority by Mohammed bin Zayed also placed him in a position that will be hard for other members of his family to challenge. The result of these internal developments is to provide greater stability to the UAE.

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Among the Arab Gulf states, the UAE shows signs of greater stability than any of its neighbors. It does not have a problem of religious extremism. It has a clear succession for the presidency. It has resolved most of its border problems with its neighbors with the exception of some minor differences at this point. It has turned its traditional rivalry with Saudi Arabia into an alliance. Above all, the restoration of American power in the Gulf region is the single most important factor in guaranteeing the stability of the UAE in the future.

Dore Gold is the former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and the current president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

This article appeared on JNS.org and was first published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

The post Why the United Arab Emirates is uniquely stable among the Arab states appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

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The Abraham Accords create new possible security structures for the Middle East in the future. Israel is currently in a position similar to that of Europe at the end of World War II, when the United States was planning to pull out and Russia would fill the vacuum. In response, the United States created NATO. Security structures are very important in light of changes in the region, and partners can help design a different Middle East based on stable players. Israel has a legitimate argument about its qualitative military edge, but it is not against the Emiratis. If Israel suddenly decides to go easy on QME, the ultimate effect will be on other Arab states who are not at peace with Israel and would try to exploit such a QME pullback.

In terms of the Palestinians, the key is whether they are ready to consider reasonable proposals. President Mahmoud Abbas was not ripe for a deal toward the end of the Obama years, and the same situation holds today. Since the time of Israeli strategist Yigal Allon, it has been widely accepted that certain portions of the West Bank would be retained by Israel and certain territories would be returned. When Israel accepted the Trump peace plan, it accepted the territorial divisions in the proposal as being relevant for the future. Israel has the opportunity to work with Arab state partners on how to use normalization to impact the territorial configuration in a peace settlement with the Palestinians.

For instance, Palestinians need an arrangement to increase their gross national product; perhaps the new regional partnerships could facilitate routes for trucking and trains from Haifa to the West Bank to Jordan to the Gulf. The Palestinians would financially benefit as conduits for trade. It is important to consider how peace between Israel and Arab states can interact to create better outcomes for the region.

Ambassador Dore Gold has served as President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs since 2000. From June 2015 until October 2016 he served as Director-General of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Previously he served as Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's Ambassador to the UN (1997-1999), and as an advisor to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

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Why does the future of the West Bank (also known as Judea and Samaria) serve as such a critical issue for Israel? Why does it engender debate, even strong debate, influencing even the language adopted for describing it? In 1947, according to the UN General Assembly Resolution 181, the area was called "the hill country of Samaria and Judea." Jordan annexed the territory in 1950 and began to use the term West Bank. The battle over terminology reflects the stakes that were involved in this territorial dispute.

The first reason for the intensity of this dispute is the geo-strategic location of this territory. It is adjacent to Israel's coastal plain, where 70% of our population and 80% of our industrial capacity are located. Moreover, it is only 40 miles wide at its maximal width. It would take a combat aircraft maybe three minutes to cross its airspace and attack Israel with little warning. Should the territory fall into hostile hands, it could pose a pressing threat to the State of Israel.

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What were the reasons why this evolved into such an intense dispute beyond the religious attachment of the parties to the land?

It was thought in the past that our territorial withdrawals would reduce the hostile intent of our adversaries, but we learned in the Gaza Disengagement in 2005 that withdrawal can actually increase the hostility on the other side. Just looking at the number of rocket launches from the Gaza Strip into Israel, they actually mushroomed in the year after we pulled out, shooting up from 179 to 946.

Now, what is the problem with the term "annexation" that is at the heart of the political debate today?

On July 10, 1967, Israel had just incorporated eastern Jerusalem into western Jerusalem. Pakistan drafted a resolution at the UN, calling this "annexation." Our foreign minister, Abba Eban, wrote to the UN secretary-general, saying that this language was "out of place." He had a specific problem with the term "annexation," preferring the "extension of Israeli law and jurisdiction" to eastern Jerusalem.

The International Committee of the Red Cross defines "annexation" as "a unilateral act of a state through which it proclaims its sovereignty over the territory of another state" (emphasis added). But did the West Bank belong to "another state," when only the UK and Pakistan recognized Jordanian sovereignty there?

According to the Statute of the International Criminal Court, annexation is a war crime. It is a subset of aggression. So I ask you: Should Israel agree to have itself placed in that context? The Soviet Union tried to have us branded as the aggressor in 1967 in the UN Security Council and then in the General Assembly, but it failed in both.

Back in 1967, when Israel captured the West Bank, it was plain as day that it was not an aggressor, but rather it was a victim of aggression and acting in self-defense.

Another fault in the current debate is the tendency to call this a "unilateral act." This is an American plan in which both sides gain. We get 30% of the West Bank, the Palestinians get 70%. It is not a unilateral gain for Israel. It is ultimately a territorial compromise.

There are those who insist that Israel must pull out of every square inch of West Bank territory. These people never read UN Security Council Resolution 242 from November 1967, with its call for a withdrawal "from territories" and not "from the territories." They are wrong and their interpretation has been opposed by all Israeli governments.

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Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin strongly believed in Israel retaining territory including the Jordan Valley. He declared in the Knesset on October 5, 1995, one month before he was assassinated:

"The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest sense of that term."

He was very clear about Israel's future boundaries: "The borders of the State of Israel during the permanent solution will be beyond the lines that existed before the Six-Day War. We will not return to the June 4, 1967 lines."

Again, he supported the creation of a territorial compromise. This should become our new point of departure again today.

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This history is pertinent to the debate that has emerged about Israel retaining parts of the West Bank this year in fulfillment of the Trump plan. It is commonly referred to as "annexation" and states have pointed out that they oppose the annexation of someone else's territory. The statute of the International Criminal Court in fact defines as one of the acts that constitute the crime of aggression specifically as the annexation of the territory of another state.

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So is it correct to label Israeli actions with respect to the West Bank "annexation?" Can you annex territory that has already been designated as yours?

Indeed, annexation resulting from aggression is unacceptable. The Turkish invasion of Cyprus was an act of aggression. The Russian invasion of Crimea was an act of aggression. Israel in the West Bank is an entirely different story.

In addition to the designation of these territories as part of the Jewish national home, one must remember that the West Bank was captured by Israel in a war of self-defense in 1967. That makes all the difference. The great British authority on international law, Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, drew a distinction between unlawful territorial change by an aggressor and lawful territorial change in response to an act of aggression.

It would be more correct not to use the term "annexation" but rather "the application of Israeli law to parts of the West Bank."

The idea that the Jewish national home applied there was backed by much of the international community from San Remo onwards. Even Article 80 of the United Nations Charter established that national rights from the period of the League of Nations carried over to the newly established United Nations.

In 1920 British leadership under Prime Minister Lloyd George was pivotal in protecting Jewish national rights. Today, 100 years later, British leadership should follow that example.

Thus, the foundations of Jewish legal rights established through San Remo were preserved for the future.

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