Jaafar Qanadbashi – Middle East expert
The general perception has always been that the UAE has played a commercial and economic role in the southern Persian Gulf region and has attracted a lot of capital by promoting its very active tourism. That role goes beyond the one it previously played in trade and port exchanges. However, contrary to this general perception, the UAE has assumed not only a political and military role but also a trans-regional role since about 15 years ago and is playing a part in areas beyond the Persian Gulf, such as the southwestern region of the Arabian Peninsula, namely Yemen, Libya, and Sudan, and has shown its new face as one of the parties to the conflict. While in the political arena, this aspect of the UAE’s overseas activities is reflected very little in the media.
The UAE also plays an active role in investing in some other regions of Africa, mainly in the fields of tourism and trade. In Libya, Yemen, and Sudan, the UAE provides arms and political support to movements that are primarily opposed to the Brotherhood movement and are trying to prevent the international Brotherhood movement from gaining power in these three countries and some other countries. Accordingly, considering the tendencies of the Justice and Development Party in Turkey, which are the tendencies of the Brotherhood, the Emirates has been challenging Ankara in these regions with lights off.
Therefore, what is happening in Syria today is considered a new version of this confrontation between Ankara and Abu Dhabi. A policy that, in a way, considering the tendencies of the Brotherhood of Qatar and the country’s activities in Gaza, can be manifested as a future version of the UAE’s confrontation with the Brotherhood movement in the form of the tendencies of Qatar, Turkey, and especially Hamas. In fact, for more than a decade, and especially since the Brotherhood movement was able to take control of Egypt’s affairs for a short time, the UAE has been pursuing a specific political and military mission, which is mainly to confront the Brotherhood movement. In such a way, the Western world has placed its hopes on the Emirates with the aim of confronting the international Brotherhood movement and especially to suppress and create restrictions for Hamas as a Brotherhood movement.
In other words, a country that acts as a proxy of the Western world, especially London and Washington, in the regional and transregional arenas and tries to eliminate the Brotherhood’s areas of activity by spending huge budgets, especially in the political and military arenas. In the meantime, the Gaza region is a region that, considering the Brotherhood’s ties to Hamas, is regarded as a favorable area for the Brotherhood to continue its activities from the West’s perspective. More than Turkey, the Emirate of Qatar, as a movement aligned with the Brotherhood, has invested the most in Gaza and has had more political, military, and economic presence in Gaza than any other Arab country. This is where the priority of the Western world is the UAE’s proxy presence in Gaza so that while confronting Hamas’ policies based on the country’s practice of the past 15 years in the economic field, it can also create a movement in line with Western policies that are consistent with the policies of the Zionist regime by investing heavily in the modernization of this region.
The grounds for this cooperation have been created since Donald Trump began the process of normalizing relations between Arab countries and the Israeli regime, and now, given Donald Trump coming to power again, this plan can gain more practical and executive scope. During Trump’s first term as president, a plan called the Abrahamic Peace or the Deal of the Century was implemented based on the exploitation of Arab capital to relocate Palestinians and end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Since then, the UAE has begun numerous cooperation with the Zionist regime, especially in the economic field. The creation of a corridor for the transport of Israeli goods through the territory of the UAE and Saudi Arabia was initiated, and serious cooperation in the field of transportation has developed in the last 15 months.
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