by Saud Abu Ramadan, Emad Drimly

RAMALLAH, Oct. 20 (Xinhua) -- The Palestinian cause has recently been facing an unprecedented sidelining, more than ever before, due to the current regional developments and international challenges, according to local Palestinian analysts.

They agreed that the Palestinians found themselves isolated, losing their traditional allies' support to face the American administration that showed hostile positions against them and watching Israel achieving progress in normalizing ties with Arab countries.

On September 15, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the kingdom of Bahrain signed in Washington two agreements of official normalization with Israel, which was the first significant sign of sidelining the Palestinians and their cause.

U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital in late 2017 and released a controversial Mideast peace plan, also known as "the Deal of the Century," in January.

The Palestinians rejected Trump's peace deal and severed political ties with Washington because the deal doesn't meet the minimum standard of their rights. Then they faced a series of pressures that led to sidelining their cause.

The Palestinians suggested holding an international conference for peace in the Middle East to get out of this impasse. However, their call found no actual mechanism to implement it due to Israel and the United States' rejection of the proposal.

REGIONAL CHANGES

Nabil Amro, a former Palestinian diplomat, admitted that the Palestinian cause had witnessed a significant retreat due to losing the Arab traditional support as well as the American pressure on the Palestinian side.

Imposing normalization on the Arab states before resolving the Palestinian cause "led to severe repercussions on the Palestinians, and many Arab states prefer their interests and have their considerations," Amro told Xinhua.

The United States had earlier announced that several Arab states would establish official relations and normalization with Israel despite the Palestinian opposition of any step like this, considering it a violation of the Arab Peace Initiative.

The Arab Peace Initiative, engineered by Saudi Arabia and approved in the Arab League Summit held in Beirut in 2002, prohibited any peace ties with Israel before ending the Israeli occupation of the Arab occupied territories in 1967.

"Imposing the equation of peace for peace by Israel and the United States represented a coup against the Palestinian cause at a time several new crises had attracted the concerns of the international community," Amro said.

He added that imposing a free normalization on the Arabs before resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict leaves the Palestinians alone with having Arab support in light of the overall superiority in the conflict's balance.

LACK OF INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT

Observers believe that the absence of international accountability for Israel and the continuous retreat in taking positions against it, including the lack of any pressure to implement the international resolutions, is an additional indication of sidelining the Palestinian cause.

Although Palestine became a non-member observer state in the United Nations in 2011, it failed to earn enough international support to promote its representation to a full member state.

Hani al-Masri, director of the Ramallah-based Masarat Center for Researches and Studies, said that "there are many local, regional, and international reasons that caused a decline of the importance of the Palestinian cause."

"These reasons brought the Palestinian cause from being the first circle of concern for so many years to an unprecedented square of marginalization," al-Masri said, adding "the decline in Arab support for the Palestinian cause was the main reason behind sidelining the Palestinian cause."

PALESTINIAN INTERNAL REASONS

Analysts believe that the Palestinians must first blame themselves for the increasing rate of sidelining their cause and the absence of serious political and financial support, in light of the internal Palestinian division that has been going on for so many years.

Ahmad Rafiq Awwad, an assistant professor at Al-Quds University, told Xinhua that the internal division made the regional and international parties lose confidence in the Palestinian leadership.

"The internal division created a difficult situation for the Palestinians; this situation made the world dealing with two separate Palestinian entities, each of them promoting legitimacy, which gave an excuse for some parties to stop supporting the Palestinian position," Awwad said.

The internal Palestinian division started after the Islamic Hamas movement had violently seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 and routed the security forces of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Enditem

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