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San Marino RTV · 2020-02-02
A San Marino RTV news roundup on Gulf reactions to Donald Trump's January 2020 Middle East plan and on renewed fighting in Yemen. It reports that leading editorials in the region called the plan impracticable and cites Omar Shaban, the researcher and political analyst who heads Pal-Think for Strategic Studies, on an effect it calls unforeseen or underestimated: the plan was a gift to Iran, since leaving Jerusalem undivided under Israeli control would only feed the battle cries of Hamas and other Tehran-backed groups in Gaza.
A San Marino RTV news roundup on Gulf reactions to Donald Trump's January 2020 Middle East plan and on renewed fighting in Yemen. It reports that leading editorials in the region called the plan impracticable and cites Omar Shaban, the researcher and political analyst who heads Pal-Think for Strate…
With the confirmation of the first case of coronavirus in the United Arab Emirates, American President Trump’s “deal of the century” has decidedly been pushed into the background. Almost a stroke of luck for Emirati diplomacy, which had already long embarked on the path of economic and political normalization with Israel.
If the United Arab Emirates, which together with Oman and Bahrain were the only Gulf countries to take part in the White House meeting, timidly declared that this is nevertheless a starting point for a return to negotiations within an international framework led by the United States, the editorials in the leading local newspapers were much more explicit: such a plan, which serves only the aspirations of the right-wing Israeli government to formalize annexation, thus ending Palestinian dreams of having a state, is absolutely unworkable.
And as emphasized by Omar Shaban, a researcher and political analyst who leads the group Pal-Think for Strategic Studies, the American president’s plan immediately produced another effect, perhaps unforeseen or underestimated: it was a gift to Iran. Leaving Jerusalem under Israeli control, as the undivided capital of the Jewish state, Shaban points out, will do nothing but fuel the “battle cries of Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza supported by Tehran.”
But there is another serious consequence. As was predictable, the sharpening of tensions in the Middle East has once again caused the situation in Yemen to deteriorate, with a spike in violence in the north of the country after several months of relative calm. Fighting between the forces of the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthi rebels has intensified especially in three areas: in Nehm, near the capital Sana’a, in the mountainous district of al-Jawf, and in Marib province. Troubling were the words of the United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, during the emergency session organized in recent days in New York, in which he stressed that months of efforts on the path of diplomacy and dialogue are at risk of being undone in just a few days. “It is not too late to change course and de-escalate the situation now,” Griffiths declared, calling on all parties to renew their commitment to a peaceful resolution of the conflict “because the Yemeni people,” he said, “deserve better than a life of perpetual war.”
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