Abraham Accords
Based on Wikipedia: Abraham Accords
In the summer of 2020, something happened that diplomatic experts had declared impossible for decades: Arab nations began lining up to recognize Israel. Not under the table, not through back channels, but publicly, ceremonially, with flags flying and anthems playing on the White House lawn.
The Abraham Accords, as they came to be called, didn't just normalize relations between Israel and a handful of Arab states. They upended a fundamental assumption that had governed Middle Eastern politics since Israel's founding in 1948: that Arab nations would never make peace with Israel until the Palestinians got their state.
That assumption turned out to be wrong. Or at least, wrong enough.
The Deal That Changed Everything
On September 15, 2020, representatives from Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain gathered on the Truman Balcony of the White House to sign agreements that formally established diplomatic relations between their countries. The Emirates and Bahrain became the first Arab nations to recognize Israel since Jordan did so in 1994, a quarter-century earlier. And Jordan's recognition had itself come a full fifteen years after Egypt's groundbreaking 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
The ceremony was deliberately grand. President Donald Trump, whose administration had brokered the deals, wanted the visual drama of historic treaties past. The staging worked. Television cameras captured an Israeli prime minister shaking hands with Arab foreign ministers against the backdrop of the White House, an image that would have seemed like fantasy just a few years earlier.
The name "Abraham Accords" was chosen with symbolic weight. Abraham, known as Ibrahim in Arabic, is considered the patriarch of both Judaism and Islam. The Accords' architects wanted to emphasize the shared roots of the peoples involved, framing the agreements not as a betrayal of Arab solidarity but as a family reunion of sorts.
How Enemies Became Partners
To understand how the Accords came together, you have to understand Iran.
Throughout the 2010s, a quiet revolution in Middle Eastern geopolitics was underway. Israel and the Sunni Arab states of the Persian Gulf found themselves sharing a common enemy: Shia-majority Iran and its growing regional influence. Iran backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, supported Bashar al-Assad's government in Syria, and wielded significant influence over Shia militias in Iraq. Its nuclear program, despite international agreements meant to contain it, remained a source of deep anxiety for both Israel and the Gulf monarchies.
This shared fear created strange bedfellows. By 2017, Israeli and Saudi intelligence services had been quietly cooperating for at least five years. Officials met regularly to share information. What had once been unthinkable became routine, though carefully hidden from public view.
Then it started becoming visible.
In October 2018, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew to Oman, accompanied by his national security advisor and the head of Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency. A joint statement blandly referenced "advancing the peace process" and "matters of joint interest," but the symbolism screamed: an Israeli leader was now welcome in an Arab Gulf state.
That same month, something remarkable happened at a judo tournament in Abu Dhabi. Two Israeli athletes won gold medals, and for the first time at any Gulf sporting event, Israel's national anthem played during the award ceremony. It was a small moment, but small moments accumulate. The unthinkable was becoming thinkable.
The Art of the Deal, Middle East Edition
The immediate trigger for the Accords was, unexpectedly, a plan that never happened.
In January 2020, Trump announced his "peace plan" for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict alongside Netanyahu. The plan was generous to Israel in ways that made Palestinian acceptance impossible: a unified Jerusalem as Israel's capital, Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley, and Israeli control over major West Bank settlements. The Palestinians would receive a non-contiguous state with multiple Israeli enclaves breaking it up. Analysts called it less a peace plan than a political document, designed to help two leaders facing legal troubles at home.
But the plan included something that worried even Israel's Gulf friends: a provision for Israel to annex roughly thirty percent of the West Bank. And in May 2020, Netanyahu signaled he was ready to move forward with annexation.
This is where a remarkable Emirati ambassador enters the story. Yousef Al Otaiba published an op-ed on the front page of Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, warning that annexation would kill any chance of normalization with the Emirates and other Arab states. It was an extraordinary intervention: an Arab ambassador writing directly to the Israeli public, in Hebrew, in their own newspaper.
Behind the scenes, Al Otaiba made an offer to Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor: the Emirates would normalize relations with Israel if Netanyahu took annexation off the table. The White House was receptive. Kushner's deputy, Avi Berkowitz, had already been pressing Netanyahu about the complications annexation would cause.
The trade was struck. Israel would pause its annexation plans indefinitely. In exchange, it would gain something arguably more valuable: formal recognition from a wealthy, influential Arab state.
The Dominoes Start Falling
Within hours of the August 13, 2020 announcement of the Israel-Emirates deal, Bahrain's senior officials were on the phone with the White House. Their message was simple: "We want to be next."
Twenty-nine days later, they got their wish. On September 11, 2020, Trump, Netanyahu, and the King of Bahrain finalized the agreement in a phone call. Four days later, Bahrain's foreign minister joined the signing ceremony on the White House lawn.
Sudan came next, in October 2020. Its deal looked different because Sudan's circumstances were different. The country had been on the United States' list of state sponsors of terrorism since 1993, a designation that effectively locked it out of the international financial system. In exchange for normalizing relations with Israel, Sudan got removed from the list, received a 1.2 billion dollar loan to clear its World Bank debts, and agreed to pay 335 million dollars in compensation to American victims of terror attacks that Sudan had allegedly facilitated.
Sudan's path was rockier than the Gulf states'. The country was in political turmoil, run by a transitional government after the 2019 ouster of longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir. When military factions began fighting each other in 2023, the formal signing of the normalization agreement was indefinitely delayed. As of late 2024, Sudan's commitment to the Accords remains unratified.
Morocco's deal, announced in December 2020, came with perhaps the most significant American sweetener. In exchange for normalizing relations with Israel, the United States recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara, a disputed territory that Morocco has claimed since 1975. The Western Sahara question had been a diplomatic headache for decades, with the indigenous Sahrawi people and their Polisario Front movement seeking independence. American recognition of Moroccan control was a major shift in U.S. policy, and a prize Morocco had sought for years.
What the Accords Actually Did
Beyond the ceremony, the Abraham Accords established frameworks for cooperation across multiple domains.
Economic ties bloomed quickly. Direct flights connected Tel Aviv to Dubai and Abu Dhabi for the first time. Israeli tourists discovered Gulf beaches; Gulf investors discovered Israeli tech startups. Trade agreements opened new markets. The Emirates unblocked direct dialing to Israel's +972 country code, a small technical change that symbolized the erasure of decades of pretending Israel didn't exist.
Defense cooperation moved from the shadows into the light. In November 2021, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz traveled to Morocco and signed a formal security agreement with his Moroccan counterpart, the first time Israel had openly signed such an agreement with an Arab state. Intelligence sharing that had happened covertly for years could now proceed through official channels.
Cultural and educational exchanges began. Scientific collaborations launched. Tourism flowed in both directions. The infrastructure of normal relations between countries started being built.
The Palestinian Question
For decades, Arab states had insisted that normalization with Israel must wait until the Palestinian issue was resolved. The Abraham Accords abandoned this position explicitly. The signatory states decided their own interests in cooperating with Israel outweighed their commitment to Palestinian solidarity.
This did not go unnoticed by the Palestinians. Nor did it go unnoticed by Arab publics, who in many countries remained more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than their governments. Opinion polls consistently showed opposition to normalization in the signatory states, even as their governments moved forward.
The tension between official policy and public sentiment became acute after violence erupted in Jerusalem in May 2021, when Hamas fired rockets into Israel and Israel responded with airstrikes on Gaza. Citizens of the Abraham Accord countries watched their governments maintain relations with Israel while Palestinian civilians died in the bombardment.
The October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel, and Israel's subsequent military campaign in Gaza, tested the Accords further. Bahrain recalled its ambassador from Israel. A member of Fatah's Central Committee publicly blamed the Accords as "one of the reasons" for the Hamas attack, arguing that Arab normalization without Palestinian progress had created desperation.
Yet the Accords survived. The Emirates and Morocco maintained their diplomatic relations even as they criticized Israeli actions in Gaza. Dhahi Khalfan, Dubai's deputy police chief, called for Gulf leaders to "reconsider the issue of dealing with Israel," saying Israel had proven its "intentions are evil." But Emirati officials did not move to cut ties.
Economic cooperation did slow. In October 2025, organizers of the Dubai Airshow announced that Israeli defense companies would not participate, citing a "technical review" that analysts interpreted as political sensitivity about appearing too close to Israel during the ongoing conflict.
The Accords Expand
The Biden administration, which took office in January 2021, continued supporting normalization while preferring the more neutral term "normalization process" to Trump's branded "Abraham Accords." A State Department spokesperson emphasized that normalization "is not a substitute for Israeli-Palestinian peace," but the administration clearly wanted more countries to join.
The biggest prize remained Saudi Arabia. As the custodian of Islam's holiest sites and the Arab world's largest economy, Saudi recognition of Israel would represent a transformation of the Middle East. U.S. officials worked for years to bring the Saudis into the fold.
Saudi Arabia proved cautious. Its foreign minister stated publicly that "without finding a pathway to peace for the Palestinian people, any normalization will have limited benefits." The kingdom seemed to be demanding what the other Abraham Accord countries had not: actual progress on Palestinian statehood.
In July 2025, following the end of a brief military exchange between Iran and Israel, the second Trump administration reportedly began pushing to expand the Accords to include Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia, with direct talks underway between Israel and Syria. A month later, Syria's new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who had come to power after the fall of the Assad regime, declined to join, saying Syria's situation with Israel was "considerably different" from other Arab states.
Then came a surprise from an unexpected direction. In November 2025, Kazakhstan announced it would join the Abraham Accords, becoming the first country to do so during Trump's second presidency. The move was largely symbolic, given that Kazakhstan had maintained diplomatic relations with Israel since 1992 and the two countries were hardly regional rivals. But it signaled that the Accords framework could extend beyond the Arab world, potentially drawing in other Muslim-majority nations without the historical baggage of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
What It All Means
The Abraham Accords represent a fundamental shift in how the Middle East works. For seventy years, the Palestinian cause had been the organizing principle of Arab foreign policy toward Israel. That principle has been, if not abandoned, then at least downgraded.
The Accords revealed what many had long suspected: that Arab governments cared more about their own security and economic interests than about Palestinian statehood. When forced to choose between continued isolation from Israel and the benefits of cooperation, multiple Arab states chose cooperation.
Whether this is progress toward peace or an abandonment of justice depends on where you stand. Supporters argue that the Accords create new channels for dialogue, demonstrate that Arabs and Israelis can coexist, and build economic interdependence that makes war less likely. Critics contend that the Accords reward Israel for occupation, remove any pressure to address Palestinian grievances, and paper over deep injustices for the sake of arms deals and airline routes.
The October 7 attack and the Gaza war that followed have complicated the picture. Some see the violence as proof that the Accords failed to address the underlying conflict. Others argue the Accords proved their value by surviving the crisis, showing that Arab-Israeli relations have become durable enough to withstand even severe shocks.
One thing is clear: the Middle East of 2025 looks nothing like the Middle East of 2015. Israeli officials travel openly to Gulf capitals. Emirates-based carriers fly the Star of David on their tails into Ben Gurion Airport. The head of Mossad meets with Arab intelligence chiefs in air-conditioned offices rather than desert safe houses.
Abraham, the shared patriarch, would recognize neither the world that created the Accords nor the world they are creating. But his descendants, once irreconcilable enemies, are discovering they have more in common than their parents taught them to believe. Where that discovery leads remains to be written.