President Donald Trump’s efforts to cement his legacy in the Middle East were well underway even before he took back the White House. “There’s no way President Trump wouldn’t be interested in trying to expand the Abraham Accords,” Trump’s former Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt told thousands of people at the Doha Forum in Qatar in December. told international representatives. The Abraham Accords are a series of normalization deals signed by Israel, Bahrain, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates in 2020 that maintain Trump’s signature foreign policy accomplishments from his first term and strengthen ties with allies. It has been hailed by both of his staunchest political opponents. Former President Joe Biden.
Indeed, Biden not only wholeheartedly embraced the Abrahamic Accords, but sought to build on them by securing a landmark deal with Saudi Arabia, the most powerful and influential Arab nation. Biden’s offer was that in return for Israeli-Saudi normalization, Saudi Arabia would get a major upgrade to its strategic partnership with the United States, on par with a NATO ally. The Israeli-Saudi agreement would be the biggest breakthrough in Arab-Israeli diplomacy, as Egypt broke ranks with the Arab world and became the first Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979. Follow Suits.
However, this approach to Arab-Israeli peacebuilding is conditional on avoiding the Palestinian issue. Until 2020, the consensus among Arab countries was that normalization with Israel would only come after the creation of an independent Palestinian state. The decision by Bahrain, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates to break ranks therefore effectively deprived the Palestinians of an important source of leverage against Israel. Since then, Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel in 2023 and Israel’s devastating war on Gaza are clear reminders that the Palestinian question cannot be ignored or subordinated to Arab-Israeli normalization. , effectively derailing the Israeli-Saudi trajectory.
Despite these obstacles, Trump is eager to finish the job he started in his first term, and Biden is returning to the original vision of the Islamic Accord, which included Israel and the Abrahamic Accord. He is keen on what he started in his first term by returning to the Accord’s original vision. Downgrading the Palestinians. All signs point to Trump continuing to believe that Israeli integration in the region is more of an import for Arab leaders than a cause for Palestinian freedom. According to Greenblatt, “It is a mistake to think that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the be-all and end-all, and that if everything was resolved between Israelis and Palestinians, everything would be bigger in the Middle East.
But critics of the Abraham Accords have never claimed that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will end all other conflicts in the region. They instead argued the opposite: peace and security in the region is impossible without a solution to the Palestinian issue. Indeed, the central premise of the Abrahamic Accords – that peace and stability in the region can be achieved while sidelining the Palestinians – has been completely undermined by Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel and everything that has happened since. was defeated by The ceasefire deal that went into effect this week underscores the centrality of the Palestinians to regional security and stability, but also potentially diplomatic space for renewed Israeli and Saudi engagement under Trump’s leadership. produce. The Abraham Accords represent a clear point of continuity between Trump and Biden. Their reasons and tactics may differ, but both presidents are peddling dangerous illusions. That peace, stability and prosperity in the wider Middle East can coexist with war, chaos and dispossession of the occupied Palestinian territories.
paper peace
Although hailed as a diplomatic victory, the Abrahamic Accords were premised on a number of false assumptions. Indeed, much of the excitement surrounding the normalization deal in 2020, especially in Washington and other Western capitals, has more to do with clearly Israeli interests than with almost reflexive needs, regardless of Israeli interests. It had less to do with intrinsic value than with bringing together things. Practical alignment with US policy objectives, such as a two-state solution and regional stability. This tendency to conflate “good for Israel” with “good for peace” is actually a standard feature of the US-led diplomatic process and an important reason for its failures over the past few decades.
While many have tried to fit the square pegs of normalization into the round holes of the two-state solution, the Abrahamic Accords originally bypassed the Palestinian question and allowed Palestinians to The fact remains that it was conceived as a way to suppress desired Palestinian institutions. We have no choice but to accept the long-term arrangements imposed by the United States, Israel, and the region. In fact, the Abrahamic Accords were themselves one of many trends against the two-state solution. This indicates that certain Arab states have moved on and no longer continue to subordinate their bilateral or geopolitical interests to Israel. The unicorn of an independent Palestinian state.
The lack of constraints on Israel has left Palestinians more vulnerable than ever.
Moreover, the Abraham Accords removed one of the few sources of leverage the Palestinians had in their highly asymmetrical conflict with Israel. In doing so, they also eliminated some of the last remaining incentives that Israel had to end its occupation of Palestinian territory or otherwise recognize Palestinian rights. The lack of constraints on Israel has left Palestinians vulnerable to the whims of an increasingly violent and deadly Israeli occupation. A more routine war in Gaza in 2021 and 2022. These problems have only worsened under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Meanwhile, Arab states argue that they can leverage their budding relationships with Israel to advance the cause of the Palestinians or a two-state solution. Bahrain, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates are also intervening with Israel to prevent demolition and evictions from their homes in East Jerusalem and to address record settlement expansion and settler violence in the West Bank. Not. They have not used their supposed influence to intervene regarding Israel’s attacks on Gaza. This is an attack that has already killed more than 46,000 Palestinians and wiped out most of the civilian infrastructure. Emirati officials, on the other hand, have shown little shame about doing business with Israeli settlers or investing in professional infrastructure such as Israeli checkpoints. Biden and Democrats in Congress are straining to eliminate these contradictions, while Trump and his fellow Republicans have already abandoned any pretense of support for a two-state solution, but these The contradiction can be completely ignored.
unfinished business
But even with the slight opening provided by the ceasefire, bringing Saudi Arabia into the Abrahamic coalition remains an uphill battle for the Trump administration. If the prospect of an Israeli-Saudi deal seemed remote by October 7th, today’s environment is considerably less hospitable. The horrific scenes of death, destruction and starvation coming out of Gaza over the past 15 months have inflamed public opinion across the Arab and Muslim world and destroyed the credibility of Israel and the United States in the global south. (Traditional western allies in the global north, such as Ireland, Norway, and Spain, are also distancing themselves from Israel.) The United Arab Emirates, even the poster child for Arab-Israeli normalization, has forced its disdain into It is being Israeli connections: Emirati businesses no longer boast Israeli connections. In other words, the Gaza war may not have ruptured the Abrahamic Accord, but it has effectively put it on ice.
In the case of Saudi Arabia, the price of normalization with Israel has risen considerably since October 7, with subsequent attacks on Gaza increasing. While the country’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, had previously sought only a rhetorical commitment from Israel to a Palestinian state, Riyadh is now pushing for concrete steps towards a state. requesting. Desperate for US mediation, Saudi Arabia, in cooperation with France, has launched a new initiative aimed at salvaging what remains of the two-state solution. In any case, it will be difficult for the crown prince, who is not known for his sentiments towards Palestine, to normalize relations with the state, which he has accused of committing “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” . Netanyahu’s International Criminal Court indictment and Israel’s former defense minister Yoav Gallant on war crimes and crimes present yet another hurdle for Riyadh. Saudi Arabia’s current stance may be best reflected in the communiqué adopted by the Arab-Islamic Summit held in Riyadh last month.
Normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia remains an uphill battle for the Trump administration.
Furthermore, the expected returns have decreased as the costs of regional engagement with Israel have increased. One thing that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf leaders value above all else is stability. However, the past 15 months have seen Israel’s disappearance of Gaza, its widespread war and occupation with Lebanon, its onslaught of attacks with Iran, and its invasion and seizure of large swaths of Syrian territory after the fall of Bashar al-Bashar al-Israel. I did. -Assad regime – nothing is stable. If the promise of the Abraham Accords was peace and stability, the reality of Netanyahu’s so-called New Middle East was one of endless bloodshed and instability. What is on offer today is not a vision that includes Israel’s peaceful integration in the region, but a vision based on Israel’s violent rule.
Not only did the Abraham Accords not bring peace and security to the Middle East, they actually helped create opposition by promoting Israeli victory, entrenching Israeli maximalism, and securing Israeli immunity. . As recent events have clearly shown, the belief that Arab-Israeli normalization could go over its head was at best misguided and at worst dangerous. It took nearly three years and the deadliest violence in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the Biden administration to finally violate this reality. The Trump administration would do well to learn the same lesson.
Load…
