Bahraini King Hamad al-Khalifa surprised no one by following in the footsteps of the United Arab Emirates, exposing his country's long-standing clandestine relations with Israel, and establishing diplomatic ties with direct flights between Israel and Manama.
And yet, this was a courageous move on his part, no less daring and perhaps even more so than the UAE leader's trailblazing move last month to normalize relations with Israel. This is because Bahrain, a tiny island nation off the Saudi coast, is more susceptible than the UAE to national security threats posed by Iran. Tehran has made territorial claims in Bahrain in the past, and the fact that over 70% of Bahrain's slightly more than one million residents are Shiite, ruled by a Sunni minority, makes it easier for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to try establishing terrorist cells inside the country to destabilize the regime.
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At the onset of the Arab Spring, Tehran encouraged Shiite activists in Bahrain to take to the streets against the regime, protests that were only subdued with the help of Saudi military forces dispatched to the kingdom. In their efforts to fend off the Iranian threat, the Bahrainis lean on support from Saudi Arabia, the presence of the US Navy Fifth Fleet stationed there, and now their burgeoning ties with Israel, which undoubtedly received Riyadh's silent blessing. Iran harshly condemned the development after it was announced on Friday, but there's no assurance it will suffice with mere words.
There's a great deal of importance to the public alliance between Bahrain and Israel, and not just because of its security implications. Bahrain is a very small country, but has a free market economy that doesn't rely just on oil. The Bahraini economy is the fastest growing in the Arab world and opens up a plethora of opportunities for broad commercial ties between the countries. On social issues, too, such as women's rights, Bahrain is ahead of many Arab countries. In the cultural realm, meanwhile, more books are published there than any other Arab country.
Beyond all this, Bahrain, similar to the UAE, is an exemplary model of religious moderation, as a counterweight to the radical political Islam spearheaded by Iran, Turkey and Qatar. Mohammad Bin Zayed, the crown prince and acting ruler of the UAE, intends to build, in the wake of the "Abraham Accord" with Israel, a complex with a mosque, synagogue and church as an expression of interfaith equality. The ruler of Bahrain, meanwhile, who in the past appointed a Jewish attorney, Houda Ezra Ebrahim Nonoo, as his country's ambassador to the United States, makes sure the tiny Jewish community (which once numbered in the thousands and now comprises less than 40 people) has permanent representation in parliament.
How ironic that as these Gulf states normalize relations with Israel and emphasize equality between the religions, the Palestinian Authority is signaling it will not allow Muslims who enter Israel through Ben-Gurion International Airport to pray at Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. The tables have turned: Israel, which has regularly been accused of infringing on freedom of worship on the Temple Mount, is opening its gates to all Muslim worshippers who arrive from the Gulf – while the PA is threatening to forbid them from praying there.
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