Introduction
The political discourses on the Middle East have remained an interesting subject among scholars due to the uniqueness of the geopolitical relations among the Arab nations and with Israel and the West. Historically, many of the studies on the Middle East have focused on Israel’s relations with the neighboring Arab states, specifically Egypt, Palestine, and Lebanon, as well as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. According to Caplan (2020), the United States has been a pre-eminent broker and mediator in the Arab-Israeli conflicts where the focus has been on establishing peace. Among the most common theme in Middle Eastern studies revolves around how the establishment of the state of Israel has been received by the Arab countries. The consensus among many scholars is that this move has never been accepted, which helps explain the never-ending conflicts. However, there is a turn of events as the relations between Israel and the Arab countries, especially members f the GCC, are starting to improve. The focus of this literature review will be to outline the Israeli-GCC relations, paying attention to such aspects as the historical developments and the normalization process.
The beginning
As mentioned earlier, the GCC countries had a unified view of and attitudes towards Israel. The case study of Qatar presented by Admoni (2021) expresses that the country’s foreign policy towards Israel was shaped by two elements. The first was that Qatar and its leadership supported Palestinians and held the same view as the other Arab countries that Israel violated the rights of the Palestinians. The second element is that Qatar desired to maintain good relations and align itself with the Arab countries, particularly Saudi Arabia. Therefore, Qatar adopted the same position as other GCC countries that Israel was considered an enemy. These elements shaped the country’s foreign policy until the 1980s, after which Qatar has reconsidered its attitudes and relations with Israel. A new foreign policy strategy designed to differentiate itself from the practices of the Gulf states is the key factor behind the change. However, the main point from this study is that until 1996, Qatar’s polity and relations with Israel were an embodiment of how the entire Arab world felt about Israel.
The Middle East has historically been a conflict zone, often involving multiple Islamic groups. Even without Israel being party to conflicts, the security in the region has hardly been guaranteed until the rise of such politically stable states as Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless, attacks on Israel have come from Shi’a and Hezbollah groups supported by Lebanon and other Arab countries (Jones & Gozansky, 2019). Lately, the aggression of Iran in the region, which sparks potential for conflict that affects the Arab countries and the West, gives a new dimension to the regional security calling for all involved to take collective action. Israel acknowledged that these conflicts affect it in more or less the same way that the GCC counties are impacted. Therefore, many small states have viewed diplomatic relations with Israel as a necessity and as a means of unifying the region for the sake of regional security. The relationship between Israel and the GCC has been described by Jones and Gozansky (2019) as fraternal enemies. This explains why smaller states, including Bahrain and Qatar, have been among the first ones to seek diplomatic relations with Israel.
The outcomes of the conflicts and such major events as the Arab Spring may have shaped the changing attitudes towards Israel. An account of the Arab Spring and the events that followed in Tunisia, Egypt, and the GCC has been presented by (Worrall, 2017). In this case, changing leaderships in Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, as well as the failure of the Arab League to defeat Israel in the various wars may have left Palestine frustrated and seeking its own actions against the state of Israel. Egypt signed disengagement agreements over Sinai in 1974 and 1975, which resulted in the Egypt-Israel Peace treaty of 1979 and the Camp David Accords of 1978 (Worrall, 2017). The GCC and most other Arab countries initiated a series of economic reforms after the failure of the Arab nationalism models. As the economic reforms bore fruit many countries now became more concerned with their internal affairs, especially national security and political stability. Arguably, the end of such regimes as Abdel Nasser and Muammar Ghaddafi played a role in the change in the Israel-GCC relations.
Even though the Israeli-GCC relations are edging towards normalization, the Israeli-Palestine conflict remains a major hurdle. According to Mohammed and Ahmad (2020), the Israeli-Palestine has shaped most of the pollical dynamics in the GCC, which results in the rise and fall of Israeli-GCC relations. As explained earlier, the Arab countries have failed to defeat Israel in their efforts to help Palestine. This makes the GCC politically weak, and the political dynamics seem to create a vacuum in the GCC since some of the countries have preferred to normalize relations with Israel. The UAE, Bahrain, and Sudan made a declaration to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel, evidently with the brokerage of the United States. A key implication of such a move is that the Arab-Israeli conflict takes a new twist as former foes become friends. The attitude among the Arab countries towards Israel is unlikely to change completely as Israel continues with such moves s the annexation of Jerusalem and the actions by the United States to recognize it as the capital of Israel. Additionally, it is also interesting to monitor how much the Palestine-Israeli conflict affects the normalization process.
Towards Normalization
Unofficial ties between Israel and the Gulf states have begun to emerge, some of which have persisted for over two decades. In many cases, the conflict between the various parties of often indirect, and no official records have been signed yet to signify the diplomatic relations. However, the GCC and Israel have been cooperating in such fields as tourism, cybersecurity, commerce, and most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic (Hitman & Zwilling, 2021). These political developments have ushered in new social network discourses that examine the mutual ties between the GCC and Israel, most of which debate the rejection and acceptance of normalization as opined by the different leaders. In this case, several countries in the GCC have been known to be among the top proponents of normalization with Israel. According to Jamilah et al. (2019), several events have taken place since 2017 that serve as evidence of how close the relations are between Israel and Saudi Arabia. For example, Muhammad bin Salam stated in an interview with The Atlantic, stating that Israel had rights to their land. Such a statement would contradict what many Arab countries believe.
At this stage, it can be argued that normalization remains to be an informal process where Israel and the GCC form partnerships in key areas of cooperation. Such a phenomenon has been labeled as a quiet revolution comprising major strategic relationships, mostly intended to address the issue of Iran (Rynhold & Yaari, 2021). An interesting aspect of this alliance is that there is a direct engagement between these two countries in the Israeli-Palestine conflict. As mentioned earlier, the conflict between Israel and Palestine remains a critical issue in the Israeli-GCC relations, which explains why Saudi Arabia decides to be directly engaged in the peace talks. Besides Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has also been keen to establish diplomatic ties with Israel. According to Fulton and Yellinek (2021), the announced normalized relations will form the first new regional partnership for the state of Israel since it formed one with Jordan in 1994. Even this partnership has been forced by domestic, regional, and systemic pressure, which simply implies the political dynamics taking place in the GCC, including the aggression by Iran.
The case of Qatar presented earlier offers new dimensions and explanations of the involvement of the GCC countries in the Israeli-Palestine peace talks. According to Admoni (2021), the hostility of Qatar towards Israel may have been caused by the growing number of Palestinians in the country. The author also acknowledges that most countries in the gulf region comprise a minority indigenous population and a majority of Palestinian foreign workers. Political activism against Israel across the GCC is majorly the result of the presence of Palestinians, who have managed to gain support from the GCC. The main question that needs to be answered is how the normalization affects the relationship between the GCC countries and the Palestinian populations within them. at this point, the direct involvement in the peace talks seems to be the only help that the Palestinians will get from the GCC as many of the countries no longer wage war against Israel.
Historically, the West has had a critical role to play in the relations between Israel and the Arab countries, most the GCC and the Maghreb. The United States and other allies have often acted as mediators and brokers of peace negotiations. These efforts have been criticized by Hitman and Kertcher (2018), who argue that the western theories of conflict resolution fail since they do not take into consideration the political-socio-cultural reality of the Israeli-Arab conflict. In this case, it can be argued that the normalization taking place is founded on the various countries finding common interests in terms of politics, culture, and social connections. Among the four issues forcing normalization between Saudi, UAE, and Israel described by Rynhold and Yaari (2021) is the threat that all countries face from Iran. Just as most of the Arab countries, Iran views Israel as an illegitimate state, which has seen Iran sponsor multiple attacks against Israel. The Shi’ite Islam forms the Iranian regime, which also poses a threat to Saudi Arabia and its Sunni allies, as well as such countries as Bahrain and the UAE.
The current state of affairs in the Israel-GCC relations can be described as both tacit and strategic cooperation. According to Rynhold and Yaari (2020), strategic cooperation only materialized in the second decade of the 21st century. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reveals that sharing intelligence between Saudi Arabia and Israel developed hesitantly in the 1990s. however, the interests perked following the Second Lebanon War of 2006 as both countries anticipated threats from Hezbollah and Syria, Iran’s allies. Signs of alliances between these two countries emerged when Israel destroyed Syria’s secret nuclear facility in September 2007, after which Saudi Arabia and other Arab allies of the United States failed to condemn the strike. Additionally, Saudi Arabia provided overflight permission to Israel in its attacks o Iran’s nuclear facilities. The smooth cooperation between these two countries is an embodiment of the transformation of the relations between Israel and the whole of the Gulf region, mostly driven by the fear of the Iranian Shi’ite regime and its allies.
Many scholars have observed the attitudes of the GCC countries shift from no cooperation to tacit cooperation. For example, Rabi and Mueller (2017) find that the lightning defeat of the combined Arab armies in 1967 resulted in the shattered economies of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. This scenario presented the GCC monarchies an opportunity to convert their newly-found oil wealth into security and regional influence. The Gulf countries took no part in the 1967 war, and yet it is this war that permanently and drastically changed their position in the region. The Arab nationalism propaganda was led by Egypt, which saw Abdel Nasser label himself the leader of the Arab world. After the war, Saudi Arabia took advantage of its position as the largest oil producer and home to two of Islam’s holiest sanctuaries as it assumed the position of the leader of the Islamic world and champions of the Palestinian cause. Cautious support to Palestine is the term used by Rabi and Mueller (2017). This implies the GCC countries would not follow the same strategies and methods as Arab nationalism.
Additionally, the shared threat perceptions across the GCC towards the Iranian propaganda means regional security became a top priority, an interest shared with Israel. Having become economically sound and superior, the GCC countries hoped for even further economic expansions, which saw most of them engage in international trade with Israel (Rabi & Mueller, 2017). The security regime in the region has also been labeled tacit by Jones and Guzansky (2017), who believe that the zero-sum game no longer defines conflict in the Gulf region. On the contrary, the general rule that seems to be in play is that of reciprocity, which can be attributed to the increasing stability across the Middle East. It can be argued that Israel could be the biggest winner in these forms of relations. The rationale is that converting foes to friends means that insecurity reduces and Israel can enjoy relative peace. Additionally, a common threat for the region can be handled in unity by all members. However, questions still linger regarding how these relations and the normalization process influence the outcomes of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Research Questions
The research questions are shaped by the available literature and the observable gaps that still need to be addressed. For example, the literature reveals that most of the relations established between Israel and the GCC are unofficial. Similarly, the Israeli-Palestine question has not been answered, especially how the new relations and normalization affect the Israel-Palestine conflict. With the relations increasingly becoming normalized, there is also the question of what the future holds for all parties. The research questions for this study are as outlined below:
- What is the current state of normalization of the Israeli-GCC relations?
- What are the core factors driving the rising levels of normalization in the relation between the GCC and Israel?
- How do the changing relations between the GCC and Israel affect the Israel-Palestine conflict?
- What do the newfound diplomatic relations between the GCC and Israel mean for the propaganda in the Gulf region and the entire Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region?
Hypotheses
H1: The Gulf states and Israel have found common interests that necessitate cooperation for the greater good of the region.
H2: Iranian propaganda is currently top of the list of driving factors of the normalization in the GCC-Israel relations.
H3: Economic progress and political stability are the other most critical driving forces behind the transformed relations between Israel and the GCC.
H4: The Israel-Palestine conflict will never be resolved with the declining support from the GCC countries.
H5: The level of violence in the Israeli-Palestine conflict may decline due to the GCC-Israel relations, especially if the GCC continues to prefer diplomacy.
H6: The transformed relations between Israel and the GCC will effectively counter the Iranian propaganda through joint efforts of all countries involved.
Methodology
Mixed Methods Approach
Mixed methods research is an approach in research that complements the traditional qualitative and quantitative approaches. According to Dawadi et al. (2021), mixed methods research offers more flexibility in meeting the increasingly complex needs of modern researchers. In this case, some of the research problems are complicated, which makes it impossible to effectively investigate using either of the traditional approaches. To fill the gaps left by each, a mixed-methods approach is used. For this research, both numerical and textual data will be collected, which will be handled using quantitative and qualitative tools respectively. The primary data will mostly be quantitative and designed to measure certain aspects of the research problem. Textual data will be both primary and secondary and will be used to explain the complex correlations between the established dependent and independent variables.
Research Design
Before the collection of data, a design for the study has to be selected and rationalized. The term ‘research design’ implies the plan used by the researcher to accomplish a valid and objective inquiry (Asenahabi, 2019). In other words, it is the plan used in the translation of the research problem into data. The approaches are used also to determine the research design, which means that the design has to be aligned with the core principles associated with each approach. In this case, a mixed-methods means that a general design that incorporates the maxims of both qualitative and quantitative research can be used.
The research design selected for this study is exploratory, a choice rationalized by the ability of this design to help address issues where limited knowledge exists. According to Swaraj (2019), the purpose of an exploratory study is to develop initial insights and background to the research problem and offer directions for further inquiry. In this case, it can be argued that the Israel-GCC relations have been extensively studied and that there is adequate literature. However, the emerging trends are yet to be fully understood, especially the role played by the Iranian propaganda in forcing alliances across the region. Additionally, most studies outline the traditional approaches and theoretical frameworks to the Middle East conflicts, which no longer apply to the newfound cooperation, both tacit and strategic. These gaps can be considered novel, which means that a new discourse needs to be shaped and new theories developed.
Sampling
Sampling is a critical element of both qualitative and quantitative studies and has to be developed for all studies involving human participants. In this study, sampling can be done for both the individuals engaged in research and the secondary materials to be used. considering the need to investigate the issue in great depth, a relatively smaller sample size can be used, preferably 50 people. In this case, 5 experts on the Israel-Arab relations will be selected to offer a generalized view of the phenomenon, especially the new transformations.
Additionally, foreign affairs officials from Israel and the GCC will be included in the sample to offer current updates on the nature and course of the current relations. In this case, about 5 respondents from each country will be involved, which allows the researcher to assess the attitudes of the states towards each other. Convenience sampling is used due to its ease and the nature of the data needed. For secondary data, previous studies dating less than fives years will be explored. There is no upper limit to the number of studies, but a key criterion is that they all must address the emerging issues, including the tacit and strategic relations, as well as the normalization process.
Data collection and Analysis
The primary data collection tool will be the interview method, where scheduled appointments will be made with all respondents. The idea behind the interview method is that it allows the research time and space to explore the subject in great depth. Open-ended questions are used because they offer the opportunity to pose follow-up questions on interesting or unclear responses from the participants. Additionally, the complex nature of the subject means that even non-verbal cues are important for the researcher to observe. The secondary data will be gathered using a systematic review of the literature. In terms of analysis, all qualitative data will be analyzed using thematic analysis and will be used as supporting evidence for the primary data analysis. Descriptive statistics will be used for describing the demographics of the sample and the responses regarding all quantified data.
Ethical Considerations
The sensitivity of the research topic necessitates that several ethical issues be addressed and observed by the researcher. First, informed consent from all participants will be obtained before anyone can be engaged in the research. the profiles of the respondents are expected to be very high, which means that a careful approach to all individuals is necessary. Most importantly, privacy and confidentiality will be upheld where personal data is not to be collected or recorded. All responses will be kept confidential and shared only with the supervisor. The shared transcripts will hide the identities of the respondents to ensure full anonymity. Lastly, no harm will be caused to any of the participants. Indecent exposure can cause serious backlashes for the research process, which means that assurances will be offered to all those who agree to participate. It is also important to acknowledge that the completed research will be shared with all respondents upon request.
Conclusion
The Israel-GCC relations remain an interesting topic for researchers despite Israel-Arab relations discourse persisting for decades since the establishment of the state of Israel. However, much of the focus has been on the conflicts that have destabilized the MENA region for decades. However, transformations are beginning to take place as the level of hostility declines, especially between the GCC countries and Israel. The evolution of these relations and the main argument for the change have been explored in the literature review. The main idea is that the Arab world has long failed to acknowledge the legitimacy of the State of Israel. After multiple failed wars against Israel, some new regional powers emerged, all based in the GCC, whose political power and position have been cemented using oil riches. Therefore, the focus for most of them is their political stability and economic progress, which means that trade and diplomatic reciprocity become the new priorities. Most importantly, the rise and growing threat from the Iranian propaganda threatens the regional security, which calls for a unified response by all those affected.
References
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