As the news trickled in from Gaza about Hamas’s even greater levels of depravity with the return of the Bibas family’s remains, a small conference in Abu Dhabi gave hope to a group of young Israeli leaders and offered a different vision for a troubled region.
Don’t be fooled by the theatrics. Hamas has become severely isolated and weakened over the past 500+ days. Moreover, with each act of outrageous cruelty, the region increasingly turns against radical Islam. The new Arabic and Islamic culture, a sort of Arab renaissance coming from the Gulf, should offer a positive path forward for the region.
Pro-tolerance conference in Abu Dhabi
I was invited to the recent conference, The International Dialogue of Civilizations and Tolerance, sponsored by the United Arab Emirates’s Ministry of Tolerance.
While not massively attended, it was well-organized and impressive. It was kicked off by the UAE’s Tolerance and Coexistence Minister H.E. Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan and senior religious figures and peace activists from the UAE, the region, and Israel.
At the conference, I embraced new and old Muslim friends (as well as Christians, Druze, Bahais, and others). Many of us joked that it almost felt like a “family reunion.”
Through a discourse of shared humanity, we watched the macabre scenes in Gaza unfold, one after the other. The Bibas family was forced to endure further humiliation and despair, as if the abduction of a mother and her two young children, and their deaths, weren’t enough.
The poor Bibas family, among the 251 abducted on October 7, 2023, captured the hearts of Israelis, along with many allies around the world. They became symbols of the unfathomable attack.
The gut-wrenching picture of Shiri holding her young red-headed sons, being dragged into the abyss, has been etched into our collective memories as a symbol of Israel’s helplessness on October 7 and continued pain as some of the hostages return home. At the same time, just a three-hour flight away from Gaza, in another Arab city, I sat in a well-equipped and well-lit boardroom, at least two-thirds of which was filled with Muslim Arabs.They included religious leaders, media personalities, intellectuals, government and policy advisers, and activists. All condemned the Hamas attack and discussed how to take on the forces of radicalism and build moderate and productive societies.
The way forward
But more than anything said at the conference, its importance was in its very existence. The UAE has signaled, once again, that peace through the Abraham Accords is the way forward. Throughout the two days, I had a chance to show a group of rising Israeli leaders around.
They included civil society activists and government advisers, mostly from the right wing of Israeli politics. It was their first visit to the UAE, and they were in a state of shock at what they experienced.
The elegant and futuristic facilities housing the conference were impressive, as are all the public facilities in Abu Dhabi. But it was through the non-descript streets of downtown Abu Dhabi that they were most surprised.
“This looks like Gaza City [before the war],” two military reservists commented. “It’s unbelievable; imagine what could be?”
Yet, Gaza and Abu Dhabi could not be further apart, and Hamas and the leadership of the UAE could not be more polar opposites.
As Hamas celebrated its abduction and murder of two children with their mother, whose bodies it was exchanging for dozens of convicted terrorists serving jail terms, I watched imams and Arab social media influencers and intellectuals denounce Hamas and iterate the need for peace. I stood for a minute of silence as one Arab intellectual stopped the conference when the news was heard.
Walking around Abu Dhabi and the UAE, one gets the immediate impression that it is possible to build a thriving, forward-looking, tolerant, and prospering pluralistic Muslim-Arab society.
One sees women dressed in full veils and face coverings walking alongside women in Western dress. The call to prayer is heard in malls between Western music and bookstores selling Qurans and Muslim literature alongside the newest choices of fiction and non-fiction from the West.
The Emiratis have long understood that their society cannot truly thrive without trade, tourism, and investment. These, in turn, require the rule of law, equal rights, and inclusion for women and minorities, religious and cultural pluralism, and openness to the world.
Old rivalries and conflicts must be put to rest, and energies and resources put into the future. The Emirates, in this sense, are a society of “builders” and managed to do this while maintaining their traditional Arab culture and espousing a moderate and tolerant Islam, including in the public sphere.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, the Palestinians are mired in a fanatical obsession with revenge against a far more powerful Israeli state, an obsession fused with Islamo-fascist ideology in the last decades.
Thus, Hamas and the Palestinians have become “destroyers,” seeking no positive vision for their people or land, and would rather invest their energies and resources into seeking Israel’s downfall. Concrete goes to tunnels, and pipes go to make rockets. My Israeli guests came away with hope for the region for the first time.
Defeating Hamas and its fellow “destroyers” is indeed crucial, but it requires a concerted, coordinated, and comprehensive solution on Israel’s part, together with its fellow “builders” in the region backed by the US. If this conference showed me anything, it’s that a positive future for the Middle East is indeed possible.
The author is a researcher and writer on the Middle East, Israel, and foreign affairs. He is co-chairman of Sharaka, an NGO dedicated to promoting Middle East diplomacy.