Friday, March 29, 2024 -
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Deep changes

There’s a great scene toward the end of the 2012 Saudi Arabian film “Wadjda.”

The film tells the story of a young girl, Wadjda, who dreams of buying a green bicycle she sees in a shop window every day. But there are two problems: the bike is expensive, and it’s not socially acceptable for girls to ride bikes (though not forbidden).

She starts thinking of ways to raise the money to buy the bike, one of which is successfully entering a Koran recital competition, which she wins.

When she announces that she plans to spend the money on the bicycle, her fellow students and teachers are shocked, and the headmistress tells her she must donate her prize money to helping Palestinians.

You should see the look on her face: Why should she donate the money to Palestinians? She won it fair and square and she wants the bike.

That one scene, the look on Wadjda’s face, revealed so much about the changing feeling toward the Palestinian cause in parts of the Arab world. The myth of Arab solidarity has slowly been eroded by decades of failure by Palestinian leadership and, concomitantly, decades of global economic success in Gulf countries.

The Palestinian cause has become an albatross, one that many Arabs have tired of being beholden to.

Slowly, the Gulf has undergone deep changes this past decade. That “Wadjda” — the first feature film by a female Saudi Arabian director — was even made is a sign of that.

History was made last week when Israel and the United Arab Emirates agreed to formal diplomatic relations. But this didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s been cultivated by Israeli leadership, notably Benjamin Netanyahu, but it is also evidence of seismic shifts within the Arab world.

It reminds me of the fall of the Soviet Union. Americans tend to ascribe the bulk of the credit to Reagan. But it was the failure of the Soviet system and the willingness of its leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, to try and address some of those failures, that were the true gamechangers.

Diplomatic relations between Israel and the UAE could not have happened if Emirati leadership and Emirati citizens didn’t desire it.

The Middle East is changing, and evolving views of Israel is part of that. Like Wadjda, Arabs are asking themselves why they should sacrifice their success for the Palestinians.

Shana Goldberg may be reached at [email protected].

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