Israel and the UAE make their quiet affair public

IT WAS MOMENTOUS and yet somehow anticlimactic. On August 13th President Donald Trump announced—via Twitter, of course—that Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) would establish full diplomatic ties. It would be Israel’s first formal relationship with a Gulf state and its third with any Arab country. In exchange Israel would shelve plans to annex parts of the occupied West Bank, which the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, promised to do during his three most recent election campaigns. “This normalisation of relations and peaceful diplomacy will bring together two of America’s most reliable and capable regional partners,” read the statement accompanying the president’s tweet.The gravity of the moment seemed lost on the president: an hour later he was tweeting about college football. His counterparts could not agree on what they had agreed on. Muhammad bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and de facto ruler of the UAE, was cautious, saying the deal was merely “a road map” to a relationship. Mr Netanyahu was more ebullient: he said there would be embassies and direct flights between the two countries.