By Abdel Bari Atwan

June 15, 2019 "Information Clearing House" - It was baffling to hear that Egypt, Jordan and Morocco – according to a US official quoted by Reuters– have accepted the Trump US administration’s invitation to attend this month’s ‘Peace to Prosperity’ conference in Bahrain. Baffling, but not necessarily surprising. Some Arab rulers are incapable of seeing the changes taking place in the region, or of understanding them if they do see them.

The news was baffling because these three countries have constantly reiterated, on every conceivable occasion, that they will never accept any deal for the Palestinians that the Palestinian people themselves do not accept, and will reject whatever they reject. How, then, can they decide to take part in a conference aimed at abolishing the Palestinians’ rights, and which is rejected unanimously by Palestinians of all political stripes? This is an act of abject capitulation to the Trump administration and a tacit endorsement of its ‘Deal of the Century’. Do these governments really think that the Arab public is too gullible to see that?

There was good reason to suppose the three governments would hold back from agreeing to attend the Bahrain conference, in which only two Arab countries, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are willingly taking part. They have no interest in conferring legitimacy on the gathering, and are opposed to the ‘deal’ it is designed to promote, as it entails losing parts of their territory and serves Israeli schemes for the establishment of ‘Greater Israel’. But how wrong that rational supposition proved to be.