Which is the UAE’s point, actually:

The move by the UAE was a “blatant violation” of understandings, hashed out at Arab summits over the years, that made clear there should be no “normalization between the Arab countries and Israel before the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as its capital,” according to Jamal Mhaisen, a senior leader of Fatah, the Palestinian party that rules in the West Bank. He called on other Arab states to take punitive measures against the UAE.

Emirati leaders said that in trying to strike an agreement, they were acting on behalf of Palestinians by extracting a concession from Israel not to pursue formal annexation of Palestinian lands — suggesting that the UAE was striking a blow for a collective Arab front. …

For many Palestinians, though, the UAE’s move amounted to a jarring milestone — the abandonment by an Arab government of a peace initiative first proposed by Saudi Arabia decades ago that called for the establishment of full relations between Arab states and Israel after the latter forged a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

“The UAE is effectively saying, we are breaking from the Arab consensus position,” said Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian analyst and nonresident fellow at the Arab Center in Washington. “We are offering normalization — not in return for a peace agreement with Palestinians in accordance with international law — but for nothing,” he said. “The big question mark is, what is behind this?”

What’s behind this? Two major issues, the first of which is the Palestinians themselves. Their Arab allies have clearly grown tired with the Palestinian all-or-nothing approach to the issue, and have signaled for two decades that they should settle for their own state while recognizing Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish homeland. The hints have only gotten louder and more obvious, with the Palestinians themselves apparently the only people in the region who hadn’t noticed them.

The second major issue is Iran and their push for regional dominance in the Middle East. Most of the Gulf Arab states are Sunni in nature, and even apart from that, they aren’t interested in kowtowing to Persians. For some reason, the Palestinians aligned themselves with the Iranians decades ago, when even a child could have predicted the kind of conflict that would present eventually with the same Arab League members that the Palestinians accuse of betrayal now.

The surprise isn’t that the UAE calculated that a normalized relationship with Israel did more for their own security than an alliance with the maximalist Palestinians. It’s that more Gulf Arab states hadn’t reached that same conclusion. The question now is who will be next to follow the UAE, not whether the Arab League will punish the emirates. Right now the smart bets are on Bahrain and Oman, but the Saudis might not wait too much longer either, the Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Kalin reports today:

The surprise move by the United Arab Emirates to normalize ties with Israel piles pressure on Saudi Arabia to follow suit, at the risk of inflaming public sentiment and breaking from the monarchy’s record of promoting the Palestinian cause. …

For those reasons, Saudi Arabia is expected to take a more gradual approach to full diplomatic recognition of Israel. Other Gulf Arab nations such as Bahrain and Oman—which have already held high-level public meetings and given tentative backing to a U.S. proposal for Middle East peace—are more likely to move closer to Israel first, officials and analysts say. …

Bahrain, which last year hosted a U.S.-led meeting on Israeli-Palestinian peace, praised diplomatic efforts by the U.S. and the U.A.E. It also welcomed the accompanying suspension of Israeli plans to annex large parts of the West Bank, but didn’t reference normalization with Israel.

Oman also said Friday it supported the U.A.E.’s decision to establish relations with Israel and hoped it would contribute to Middle East peace.

The Saudis might go last, not for those concerns but as a way of gradually increasing the pressure on the Palestinians to negotiate more seriously. The UAE agreement was a bomb that dropped on the people of the Palestinian Authority; if another member of the Arab League follows suit, it might swing public opinion in the West Bank at least to press Abbas to cut a deal while he can. The Saudis might calculate that their decision will be a Sword of Damocles hanging over the entire issue, with Palestinians knowing that a Saudi recognition of Israel would mean an end to nearly any influence in negotiations. Get the best deal you can now, this could mean to Abbas.

At least the Palestinians appear to have finally figured out the main issue driving this:

The Emirates may also have been emboldened by the weariness of the wider Arab public and the almost apathetic response to earlier consensus-shattering moves by the Trump administration, such as recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the United States embassy to the disputed city.

But Palestinian analysts said the timing of the latest announcement probably had more to do with the upcoming presidential elections in the United States.

“The Gulf countries are interested in keeping Trump in power,” said Ghassan Khatib, a political scientist at Birzeit University in the West Bank. “They were very happy with Trump’s policy on Iran and unhappy with Obama’s. So they will do anything to contribute to the re-election of Trump.”

As Oman and Bahrain praised the deal, along with Egypt, many here expected those small Gulf states to be the next to forge relations with Israel.

Perhaps now might be a good time to rethink those Iranian ties, eh?