Since its founding by Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the UAE has always been at the forefront of Arab countries supporting the Palestinian people and cause, as everyone in the Arab region and elsewhere knows. This undeniable fact is attested by political positions, statistics and official figures. The Palestinian side itself confirms it.
Let’s not refer here to UAE figures. We need only look at the reports of the Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction (PECDAR). PECDAR reveals that the amount of aid to the Palestinian people since the creation of the Authority amounts to 2.1 billion US dollars.
The UAE ranks fourth among the top ten countries that have provided financial support to the State of Palestine since the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994. This assistance includes support for the Palestinian Authority budget and infrastructure projects. This does not include the hundreds of millions of dollars provided by the UAE to the Palestinian people through the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
UNRWA serves the health and education sectors for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. When the US administration declared its suspension of aid to UNRWA, the UAE covered the shortfall. It provided $300 million in aid to the agency, ten times more than it had previously provided. The UAE has also provided many other aid packages to the Palestinians.
But we don’t say this to congratulate ourselves for helping our Palestinian brothers. Rather, it is rather a matter of invoking the UAE’s firm and unwavering position and unlimited support for the Palestinian cause.
History teaches us that the UAE has largely supported the Palestinian people on the political, economic and humanitarian levels. Its commitments are based on principles and values, solidarity and common destiny, to support the determination of the Palestinian people and their right to establish an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital. On the basis of well-established positions, official statistics and solid evidence, the UAE’s laudable contribution and positions to the cause of the Palestinian people are not up for debate.
This is why it is surprising that the UAE is under attack from regional parties advocating support for the Palestinians when in reality it has not given them much in recent decades. Here we are talking specifically about the mullahs of Iran who, since the 1979 Khomeini revolution, have not stopped hijacking the Palestinian cause.
Today, they are striking at the Emirates for wanting to create a stable, secure and peaceful environment in a region that the mullahs wish to see remain the scene of conflict, carnage and proxy wars their sectarian arms hold a key role in.
One wonders how a newspaper loyal to Iran’s supreme leader could say that the UAE has become a “legitimate target” for pro-Mullahs’ organizations and militias. The daily newspaper Kayhan, renowned spokesman for the ultraconservatives in Iran, called the agreement a “betrayal” of the Palestinian cause. “The UAE’s great betrayal of the Palestinian people and its signing of an agreement to normalise relations with the Zionist regime, if it has only one result, it will be to turn this small, rich country heavily dependent on security into a legitimate and easy target for the resistance,” Kayhan wrote.
A few legitimate questions arise for these simple and naive people. What have you and your disastrous regime done for the cause and the Palestinian people? Can you quote a single figure to put the powder keg on your humanitarian and technical assistance to the Palestinian people?
Yes, we know that you spend a lot of money from the livelihood of the Iranian people, claiming to spend it on the Palestinian cause. But you know the real destination of these funds.
Let’s face it: Did your generous spending on extremist and terrorist militias in the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and elsewhere serve to free an inch of occupied Palestinian territory? Is this spending really going along the lines of liberating Jerusalem as you say?
You and I both know that Jerusalem and the entire Palestinian cause are nothing but a spin. Your Trojan horse, which serves your sordid ends, your expansionist project, has an ugly sectarian face and hides heinous intentions and historic anti-Arab hatred.Clearly, the Iranian mullahs have no other goal in defending the Palestinian cause than to burnish their image with Arab and Muslim communities, masquerading as defenders of Islamic causes, making people believe in their role as leaders of the so-called “axis of resistance. ”
Although, the truth is as clear as day. No mullah leads an axis of resistance. This so-called axis exists only in their imagination. They have never borne the heavy burden of defending the Palestinian people, neither in peace nor in war.
Let me turn to another aspect of your support for Palestinian terrorist organizations that also claim to defend the Palestinian people. Honestly, I wonder what these organizations have brought to the Palestinian people.
Hasn’t their only product been the division and discord among Palestinians, opening the door to losing the battle that gave Israel the opportunity to take over what was left of their territory? Aren’t organizations such as Lebanese Hezbollah and Hamas rather puppets of the mullahs to blackmail the West, obtain regional status and negotiate to push their expansionist agendas?
Without a strong influence in vital countries and regions such as Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, the Palestinian territories, Iran cannot negotiate with the West over its nuclear capabilities.
In the end, the delusional and deluded must remember one point. The Iranian mullahs, who threaten the UAE, have not fired and will not fire a single shot at Israel, even though their Revolutionary Guards are deployed in Syria, pretty close to Israel’s borders.
Indeed, they are nothing but sloganeers and seditionists, playing the sectarian card. Sectarianism has given them the chance to play a dreadful role in the destruction of many countries in the Arab region.
