The Abraham Accords — Two Years In
By a TIJ Writer
For as long as it has been a state, Israel has been diplomatically isolated. A Jewish island in a sea of Muslim nations was always going to have issues, especially since many in the region view Israel as a Western colonial imposition. Immediately after the 1947 vote to establish Israel as a state, violence from Israel’s neighbors broke out, escalating into a full-scale war upon Israel’s declaration of independence several months later. After Israel’s massively successful 1967 war in which the Jewish nation captured The West Bank, The Golan Heights, and the Sinai Desert, the Arab nations further cemented their opposition to Israel in the Khartoum Resolution. The product of a meeting of eight Arab heads of state resulted in a document that outlined forbidden activities with Israel. This document declared that there would be “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it, and insistence on the rights of the Palestinian people in their own country.” These “three noes” very much reflected the ideas of Arab states at the time: unflinching antagonism to Israel and her existence.
Slowly but surely, this stance softened. In 1979, a few years after a dangerous stalemate in the Yom Kippur War, Egyptian premier Anwar Sadat made peace with Israel in exchange for the return of the Sinai Desert. Sadat’s bravery and willingness to negotiate earned him and his Israeli counterpart Menachem Begin a Nobel Peace Prize. It also likely cost Sadat his life — he was assassinated a short time later. In 1994, The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan made peace with Israel, although they did not get nearly the land concession that Egypt had secured. From there, progress seemed to stall. A war in Lebanon, and Intifada, and several American presidents came and went before a dramatic breakthrough in September of 2020 — the Abraham Accords. In a deal brokered by Jared Kushner and the Trump Administration, four Arab nations — The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco — all normalized ties with Israel in rapid succession. This historic deal is complicated and multifaceted — two years from the initial signing of the deal, it’s worth revisiting.
To fully understand the context of the accords, it is worth noting what made them happen in the first place, as well as the guiding principles for each country. The UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco all have different but occasionally overlapping goals. For the UAE and Bahrain, the reasons are clear — Iran, weapons, and foreign investment.
Much of geopolitics in the Middle East these days can be seen through the lens of a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, two regional powers with mutually exclusive political goals and different religious orientations. Zooming out one level more, this conflict could even be viewed as a fight between The United States on the Saudi side and China and Russia on the Iranian side. The gulf countries like the UAE and Bahrain are eager to ally themselves with the West in this broader conflict, especially if Iran develops a nuclear weapon. Allying with the West involves growing closer to the United States, and what better way to fall under American protection than by making peace with Israel with Israel, the hegemon’s best friend in the region. This was made even more explicit by American promises of F-35 military aircrafts to the Emirati government, although America has yet to follow through on this part of the deal. Finally, gulf governments writ large are eager to court Western foreign investment. Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS, Saudi Arabia has aggressively courted foreign money, while Qatar’s massive investment in hosting the upcoming World Cup is likely a strategy to present a friendly environment for Western money. The UAE and Bahrain almost certainly made the calculation that the Abraham Accords would benefit them financially.
Morocco and Sudan were more explicit than the UAE and Bahrain in their motivations, eschewing nebulous ideas of international power politics for concrete diplomatic concessions. In the years after the 1989 Islamist coup in Sudan, the American State Department designated the African country a “State Sponsor of Terror.” This label, reinforced by the safe haven Sudan provided to Osama Bin Laden in the 1990s, comes with harsh sanctions that crippled the Sudanese economy. In exchange for the lifting of these brutal sanctions, Sudan agreed to make peace with Israel — although the deal was much more of a quid pro quo than an explicit, written statement. Following Sudan, Morocco made peace in exchange for American recognition of its contested claim to territory in the Western Sahara. Again, this agreement was not explicitly stated, but anyone paying attention can reasonably infer what happened.
The United States, and the Trump Administration in particular, had a strong hand in shaping the deals. The official signing ceremony was held on the White House lawn, and Trump has made a strong effort to associate himself with the Accords. In the recent past, there has been a trend in the United States of tearing up the deals of your political predecessor — best exemplified by Donald Trump’s failure to reauthorize Obama’s JCPOA, commonly referred to as the Iran Nuclear Deal. To his credit, however, President Biden has embraced the Accords, while Democratic lawmakers have advocated for even more expansion. This acceptance of a signature policy of the Trump Administration is a credit to Biden, who has shown a consistent dedication to pro-Israel policy over his long political career. On the side of the Arab countries, it bears mentioning that the Accords are deeply unpopular. The leading Middle East-related think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, conducts regular and reliable polling, often to fascinating ends. When questioned about their support for the Abraham Accords in August of 2022, respondents in Arab countries overwhelmingly disapproved of the peace deals. In the UAE, 69% of the population holds either “very negative” or “somewhat negative” views of the Abraham Accords, with only 26% of the population viewing them favorably. The numbers in Bahrain are even starker — 73% disapproving to 23% approving. Furthermore, despite at least a little initial optimism, Emiratis and Bahrainis are increasingly against the Accords. This should come entirely as a shock, however. Many of the motivating factors — defense against Iran, military weaponry, and foreign investment that largely benefits the wealthy — are not everyday issues for the average Emirati or Bahraini. Furthermore, being the autocratic regimes that they are, these gulf countries are not responsive to the needs of their population, and public opinion bears relatively little weight on high-level decisions.
The deals have had some tangible successes, as well as some tangible failures, although on balance, it is safe to say that Israel and the Arab nations have benefitted immensely. For Israel, the deals have been a massive diplomatic win. The classic line in the Khartoum resolution, the “three noes” have been explicitly violated, and any move that increases Israel’s exception automatically counts as a win. And while the initial predictions that more countries would join on to the Accords have not been realized, this does not denote a lack of progress. Over the summer, Saudi Arabia, the Western-backed power in the region, allowed Israeli flights to land in the country. The current king of Saudi Arabia, the 86-year-old Salman bin Abdulaziz, maintains that a resolution to the Palestinian problem is a prerequisite for peace, but Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has not been as resolute on the issue. I suspect that once Salman bin Abdulaziz dies, MBS, who already governs much of the country’s affairs, will more aggressively consider peace with Israel. Once the premier Sunni force in the region declares their fight is Israel settled, all things are possible.
The Arab states, too, have begun to reap the benefits of the deal. Over the summer, Israel and the UAE signed a free trade agreement that removed tariffs from the huge majority of goods exchanged between the two countries. While the UAE has not received the weapons they were promised (although I suspect that will happen over the next few years) they are succeeding in bringing themselves closer to the West. Israelis flocked to the UAE immediately after the deal, and the author of this article will be visiting the UAE as part of a Jewish-American cultural exchange program. Morocco has benefitted too, signing a defense deal with Israel in 2021.
Peace in the region has quantifiably expanded slightly after the Accords — Israel recently signed a maritime agreement with Lebanon. While this treaty is a far cry from normalization, or even peace, it marks an important step in diplomatic interaction between two historic foes, marking a departure from the Khartoum resolution.
If there is one major loser, it is the Palestinians. Once the center of the anti-Israel movement, they have been shunted off to the side by the Arab states. Not surprisingly, Palestinian opposition to the deal has been widespread, from the leaders to the general populace — Palestinians in Gaza and East Jerusalem oppose the deal 39%-34% and 50%-48% respectively, while West Bank Palestinians overwhelmingly oppose the deal by a margin of 58%-25%. This is to be expected, as Palestinian needs are being discarded in these bilateral deals. There are a few reasons for this change in the Arab attitudes towards Palestinians. First is the collapse in Palestinian leadership. Yasser Arafat, the charismatic terrorist who ran the Palestinian resistance for over three decades, has not found a worthy successor. The leadership today has collapsed into a mix of corrupt and ineffectual bureaucrats and Iranian proxies — hardly a united or inspiring combination. This lack of leadership has enabled the Arab countries to more easily prioritize their own interests over those of their Palestinian brethren. Second, there has been a generational shift in leadership in Arab countries. To put in crudely, the generation that remembers 1948 and 1967 are dying, and their younger counterparts have grown up in a world in which Israel’s existence is a fact of life. Prioritizing the Iranian threat over a Palestinian fight they may see as hopeless makes Palestinian requests relatively easy to trample.
The Abraham Accords are still very much an ongoing project, and the long term geopolitical benefits will not be seen for quite some time. However, the short term economic and security benefits are clear, while the Arab signers will grow closer to the West over time.
