Israel restores core aims of Abraham Accords

By Antoine Shlehat

Reading most Israeli analyses published on the five-year anniversary of the Abraham Accords — described as peace and normalization agreements between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain (signed in September 2020, later joined by Sudan and Morocco) — does not produce shock or deep puzzlement. What we see is the stripping away of Israel’s core objectives in those accords without any intention to put out the ember meant to remain burning. Although doubts exist over whether those objectives will be achieved in light of the Israeli aggression against Doha, the ongoing campaign of annihilation, starvation and destruction in Gaza, and the escalation of annexation and control measures in the West Bank, the recovery of those objectives may indicate a refusal to accommodate them.

What first drew attention was the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University noting that despite the 2024 war on Gaza, the value of Israel’s security exports reached a new peak: $14.8 billion, with 12% of those exports going to Abraham Accords countries, compared with no more than 3% in 2023. Data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute indicated that Morocco imports 11% of its total security imports from Israel. The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics said trade between Israel and the UAE rose from $200 million in 2020 to more than $3 billion in 2024. According to the Israeli institute’s conclusions, despite the crisis atmosphere suggested by the ongoing war in Gaza, none of the Abraham Accords signatories has cut or officially frozen relations with Israel. It attributes this to several reasons, chief among them fear that such steps would provoke a crisis in relations with the United States under the current administration of President Donald Trump, who served as the accords’ main architect during his first presidency five years ago.

Related analyses generally agreed that, in retrospect, the accords were discussed at the time as a “historic turning point indicating a fundamental change in the Arab world’s stance toward Israel.” That turning point was attributed to two main reasons. The first was that the Abraham Accords broke what one Israeli orientalist called “the glass ceiling in Israeli-Arab normalization relations”: until the accords were signed it was assumed that no Arab state would dare normalize relations with Israel before a resolution of the Palestinian issue, as outlined in the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002. But, as the same orientalist writes, one Arab state after another began to show readiness — even enthusiasm — to sign peace agreements with Israel, a move Israel interpreted as a dismissal of the Palestinians, who came to be seen as a nuisance and an obstacle to broader Arab interests.

The second reason for viewing the accords as a historic turning point, in several Israeli readings, is that the Abraham Accords reflected an Arab recognition of the importance of ties with Israel, which had become a regional power with economic and military influence capable of helping Arab states develop their economies and defend themselves against the Iranian threat. This contrasted with the past, when Arab states sought peace with Israel mainly to recover territory or to draw closer to the United States and its patronage.