Palestinians ‘Cast to the Margins’ as Israel Deepens Ties with Gulf Arab States

• The Arab leadership have sold out the Palestinians to Trump’s Deal of the Century. This is a plan to drive the Palestinians into the Sinai desert. Publicly, they will deny it but all the leaks have confirm it.
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• Palestinians ‘Cast to the Margins’ as Israel Deepens Ties with Gulf Arab States
  by Ali Harb, https://www.middleeasteye.net/
  Cooperation between Israel and Gulf countries ‘should be expanded,’ says Israel’s intelligence and transportation minister
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  A surprise meeting with Oman’s Sultan Qaboos. A tour of the largest mosque in the United Arab Emirates. A call for a rail link between Haifa and the Gulf.
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  Over the last month, Israeli leaders have made a string of friendly visits, gestures and statements towards Arab leaders in the Gulf, positioning Israel for what appears to be a more overt alliance with Gulf states, from Oman to Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
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  The Palestinian struggle for statehood, meanwhile, has been “cast to the margins” by the leaders of these same Gulf countries, said Saeed Khan, a senior lecturer in Near East studies at Wayne State University in Detroit.
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  “It seems as though, among the Saudis, UAE and to a certain degree Oman, they are clearly putting their stock with the official Israeli political line. They’re either turning a blind eye or seemingly not at all interested in the Palestinian issue,” Khan told Middle East Eye on Thursday.
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  Khan’s comments come as Israel’s intelligence and transport minister called for a deeper partnership between his country and its neighbours on the Arabian Peninsula, including in the fields of transportation and tourism.
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  “In my view cooperation between Israel and the Gulf states can and should be expanded,” Yisrael Katz told Reuters via email on Thursday, a few days after he returned from a visit to Oman earlier this week. “Israel also has a lot to offer when it comes to water desalination and irrigation, agriculture and medicine.”
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  Katz wasn’t the only Israeli leader to visit the Omani capital, Muscat, in recent weeks. Late last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a surprise visit to the Gulf country, meeting with its leader, Sultan Qaboos bin Said. Israel’s Sports and Culture Minister Miri Regev was also in the nearby UAE last month, where she met Emirati officials and toured the world’s third-largest mosque, in Abu Dhabi. Khan said leaders in Israel and the Gulf are experiencing a “sense of empowerment” thanks to US President Donald Trump.
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  He explained that Washington has given a green light to its allies in both places to work jointly and openly on their common goal: building a united front opposed to Iran.
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  At the midway mark of the US president’s first term in office, and with Trump facing investigations at home related to possible collusion between his election campaign team and Russia, there is a “moment of desperation” to strengthen ties between Israel and Gulf countries, Khan said.
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  “There’s an expedited timeframe by which the Gulf states and Israel are operating in order to provide a united front and exert maximum pressure against Iran,” he told MEE.
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  The Palestinian issue
  The White House has also been readying a peace plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, dubbed by the Trump administration as the “deal of the century”. But Palestinian leaders have already signalled that they will not accept Washington’s proposal.
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