The first ever direct commercial flight from Israel to the UAE on Monday was an event that symbolized the great peace opportunities awaiting Israel and the Arab world in general. The peace treaty between the UAE and Israel has become one of the top news stories in the world. Ideally, it signals the end of the enmity between Arabs and Jews and between Palestinians and Israelis. But, first, a preamble. As a kid in Saudi Arabia, I grew up, much in the manner of other Saudi kids, supporting the Palestinian cause like I grew up with my skin. The Palestinian people’s struggle for social justice and national freedom was woven into the essential repertoire of my consciousness and the very fabric of my quotidian life. Their suffering was a wound we all felt — and felt genuinely at the core of our being as young Saudis. I, like millions of young Arabs at the time, dreamed of taking up arms and joining the Palestinian struggle against Israel"s occupation. And, like them, I too never failed to contribute a chunk of my allowance to the cause. The amount may not have been a king’s ransom, but it was a symbol of the empathy, support and solidarity we evinced for the Palestinians as a disenfranchised people. We wished for them to live decent lives and enjoy a prosperous future. That I personally held those beliefs then, and that I continue to hold them today, is something that was never in doubt; something unshakable in my view of the world. One thing is plain: When Palestinians, indeed when other Arabs too, find themselves confronting Israelis today, it is not because they are Jews — historically, anti-Semitism was never a feature of Arab culture but one that afflicted the Western world — but because they are occupiers. The struggle in Palestine would surely have been waged as tenaciously had the occupiers been, say, Dutch Catholic. The Israeli leadership needs to leave its military mentality behind and focus on future economic opportunities. Dr. Sulaiman Al-Hattlan Those familiar with the centuries-long Arab rule in Spain, when Muslims, Christians and Jews lived together in total harmony, with each exercising equal rights to religious and political freedom — some scholars call it the “Golden Age” — are familiar with the striking fact that this was the only time in the entire history of the European continent that Muslims, Christians and Jews lived in concert (alas, that time has not been replicated in Europe since Arab rule in Spain ended in 1492). That Muslims, Christians and Jews are together Abrahamic peoples and that it was wrong for anyone in the Arab world to implicate all Jews around the world, including progressive Jews in Israel, in the injustices inflicted on the Palestinians was a realization that came to me as I grew up and began to acquire a maturing consciousness. That, it appears to me, is the intended purpose of the Abrahamic Family House, a compound comprising a mosque, a church and a synagogue, whose construction is expected to be completed in Abu Dhabi by 2022. It will serve as a shrine to religious harmony and cultural tolerance among the three Abrahamic faiths. All of which brings us to the peace agreement between the UAE and Israel, at whose core lies the fact that one cannot deny that reality is, well, real. Today, some 163 countries recognize Israel, among them two Arab nations that recognize it officially and five others that extend it de facto recognition. And, yes, lest we forget, the Palestine Liberation Organization itself officially recognized Israel in 1993. Now the UAE, flying high as perhaps the most successful country in the Arab world in fields such as business, education, science and technology, aims to fly high as a model in the struggle against religious extremism. It does this through some key institutions it has established, such as the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Societies, the Muslim Council of Elders, and the Sawab Center, which is a digital communications hub designed to counter the extremist ideas promoted by groups such as Al-Qaeda and Daesh. These projects engage prominent Muslims in the entire Arab world, including Ahmad Al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar (Al-Azhar was founded in 970 and is renowned today as a center of Islamic studies and the most prestigious institution of its kind in the Islamic world). For the UAE-Israeli peace treaty to have legs and meaning, and to produce its intended — not just hoped for — results, however, Israel must leave by the wayside its expansionist ambitions, curb its messianic zealots in the settler movement and come to the realization that, without recognition of the right of Palestinians to statehood, independence and freedom, no Arab-Israeli diplomatic breakthrough is complete. The Israeli leadership needs to leave its military mentality behind and focus on future economic opportunities within its neighborhood. Using its power in Washington to negatively influence US policy toward the Arab world will not establish a lasting trust with its Arab neighbors. As the late Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal once observed, in a comment about Israelis bristling with arms and relying solely on them for survival, put it: “They must live with the Palestinians, not with the United States. They have to achieve acceptance in the neighborhood they come to (live in). They have come there by force but cannot remain there by force. They can remain there only by acceptance.” Sulaiman Al-Hattlan, a former Nieman fellow at Harvard, is the CEO of Hattlan Media and the host of the weekly TV talk show “The Arab Talks” on Sky News Arabia. Twitter: @AlHattlan Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News" point-of-view