Boundaries of Slowly Thawing Arab-Israeli Relations on Display at Iran Risk Summit in NYC

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Decoding the relationship between Israel and the Arab Gulf states has become a kind of Middle Eastern Kremlinology… Israel has a diplomatic mission in Abu Dhabi, and it’s not surprising anymore when an important former Gulf official will appear in public with a prominent Israeli, or a delegation of Saudi scholars travels to the Jewish state… This awkward balance was on display at the Iran Risk Summit, held on September 19 in New York City. The event was United Against A Nuclear Iran’s day-long assessment of the aftermath of the U.S.’s July 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, and was timed to correspond with the annual opening of the United Nations General Assembly, taking place this week. The event included talks from scholars, government officials, and experts from the U.S. and the Middle East, and Europe, including former UANI president and ex-Obama Administration arms control official Gary Samore, who supported last year’s nuclear deal, and former Senator and current UANI president Joseph Lieberman, who did not. The event frequently hinted at the Arab-Israeli thaw. On three different occasions over the course of a roughly 40-minute long talk, Yousef Al Otaiba, the United Arab Emirates’ longtime ambassador to the United States, listed Hezbollah in the same breath as Hamas in discussing Iranian proxy groups active throughout the Middle East… One reason for the covert on incomplete status of the upgrade in the Israel-Gulf relationship is the lack of any apparent progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Tzipi Livni, one of the heads of the Knesset’s opposition Zionist Union party and Israel’s former Foreign Minister and Justice Minister, said as much during the day’s most noteworthy event: A panel discussion with former Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski; Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa, the former Bahraini Ambassador to France and Spain; a former president of the UN General Assembly; and someone whom Lieberman introduced as a current adviser to the Bahraini government. Like the UAE, Bahrain does not recognize Israel’s right to exist. But that didn’t stop a prominent Bahraini official—someone who is in fact a member of Bahrain’s royal family—from appearing onstage with (albeit one seat down from) one of Israel’s most well-known political figures for over 45 minutes.