The Abraham Accords

"I was born and raised in Pakistan, a Muslim country that has stamped on its passport, "valid for every country in the world except Israel'. It was something that bothered me because I couldn't quite fathom what the fuss was about, and I had read in the Qur'an that Jews were considered 'People of the book' and therefore our cousins in the Abrahamic tradition. There wasn't much information or chatter about Israel. However, I had a curiosity about the people after reading The Diary of Anne Frank and Exodus from our local library."

"We later lived for eight years in Dubai [United Arab Emirates], where there was absolutely no mention of Israel, good or bad. We had a chance to travel to many countries in the Middle East including Saudi Arabia, Oman and Bahrain."

Raheel Raza, Pakistani-Canadian journalist and president of the Council for Muslims Facing Tomorrow

 

"Israel is a reality and the sooner everyone accepts that, the easier it would be to resolve the unnecessary conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine."

"The leaders of the UAE have shown courage. Let us hope other Muslim countries follow suit."

Husain Haqqani, former Pakistani ambassador to the U.S., scholar, Hudson Institute

 

"Israel has been the perennial 'what about' excuse used by Arab despots seeking to silence their domestic opponents as 'Zionist collaborators'."

"A universal peace between Israel and these Arab regimes would finally do away with this. A critical mass of Arabs, Muslims and leftists still struggle with Israel’s historic legitimacy, leading us all to constantly overplay our hand in peace negotiations."'

"The Saudis desperately need regional allies against their main foe Iran.They need economic trade and diversification  and they need military alliances to contain Iran.  Israel’s economic and military assets and interests meet these needs perfectly."

"In return, Israel gains legal regional recognition from the custodians of the Prophet’s mosque, and a Sunni Arab consensus over the protection of its West Bank border, policed perhaps by Arab League, Egyptian, Jordanian or UN forces."

Maajid Nawaz, founding chairman Quilliam, counter-extremism think-tank, U.K.

Left to Right: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump, Bahrain Foreign Minister Abdullatif al-Zayani, and UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan wave from the Truman Balcony at the White House in Washington, DC, after the signing of the Abraham Accords, on September 15, 2020. Photo: AFP

Finally, a glimmer of hope has matured into a celebration of peacemaking in the Middle East. By no means the entire Middle East, where war still rips countries apart in tribal, sectarian animosities and where in many quarters the word 'Israel' remains a violent epithet. Last week, years of warming relations between two Gulf states that had never gone to war with Israel, that had maintained the citizenship of their Jewish residents, signed peace agreements with the Jewish state, brokered by U.S.President Donald Trump, working to bring the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain peace with Israel.

 

The situation which gained approval leavened in many quarters by surprise at an event predicted never to happen until 'Palestinians had their state', was placed in sobering perspective, however, by Gilead Sher who had served as chief peace negotiator for Israel in the Camp David Accords, along with the Oslo Accords of the 1990s. Big deal? Yes. "But there was never a real conflict here. There were no combat zones, no territorial disputes, no violence. This isn't a historic breakthrough after a long, drawn-out negotiation, but merely a normalization of relations already over 25 years old."

 

Having said which, apart from the peace agreement with Egypt and then with Jordan, there has been no forward movement of other Arab Muslim countries in the Middle East or North Africa, to formally recognize -- or even wish to -- the presence of the Jewish state in their midst. Its presence seen to be an affront to Islam in the sense that land once consecrated to Islam, must never revert to or in any sense host the presence of  another religion, other than in a position subservient to Islam. This is the 21st Century. It is long past time for Arab regimes to face the reality of the present.

 

That an ancient people once vanquished for the second time and banished from their heritage geography had re-established itself as a Judean presence reflecting its origins. That it did so after a diaspora of millennia had flagellated Jews wherever they settled as migrants and citizens with vicious discrimination as lesser-entitled beings where pogroms and humiliations marked their passage from the past to the present, culminating in a wholly effective horrific genocide. If that experience couldn't persuade any group that it was past time for a defensive homeland to preserve what was left of world Jewry, nothing would. 

In most of the world community's efforts to reconcile the Arab-Muslim world with the final collective presence of Jews returning en masse to the Biblical geography of their heritage foundation, it has been the United States and its various presidents that have concentrated thought and effort to varying degrees of near-success. On each such occasion, the Palestinians, viewing themselves as displaced victims of Jewish return to a homeland Arab Palestinians claimed for themselves, refused to accommodate the equal presence of Jews and Arabs each in their own parcel of land diminished in size from the mid-20h Century British 'partition' plan, handing much of it to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

The Arab League nations, simply put, which had initially supported the 'Palestinian cause' -- and even actually, initiated it in defiance of the prospect of a Jewish state in perpetuity -- has become wearied of the Palestinian cause, and for which its leaders consistently and with pre-determination, turn away the prospect of peace between its two major Palestinian terrorist groups, Fatah and Hamas, and the State of Israel. Finding it in their own best interests to take the opportunity to benefit from a neighbour's military and technical superiority when the Sunni-dominated region itself feels under siege by the Aryan Shiite Islamic Republic of Iran.

 

Not for ever could the situation carry on, where one nation among 22 others would be ostracized and continually threatened, its borders violated its people under constant duress. Not for ever should one country among 22 others be forced to build its military for defence while the others did so for offensive purposes. It is quite simply logical and makes sound political and diplomatic and trade sense for nations that have much in common to favour sound relations between themselves. Particularly in the face of ongoing destabilization and threats by a regional terror state.

 

And so, the Treaty of Peace, Diplomatic Relations and Full Normalization, otherwise known as the Abraham Accords made history. More history in the making is in the wings of this theatrical stage the world knows as corroborative neighbourliness. 

 

"Israeli officials intimately involved in the UAE deal privately say that the Emiratis were emphatic about focusing on interfaith understanding and religious tolerance. As the treaty itself notes, 'The Parties undertake to foster mutual understanding, respect, co-existence, and a culture of peace between their societies in the spirit of their common ancestor, Abraham, and the new era of peace and friendly relations ushered in by this Treaty, including by cultivating people-to-people programs, interfaith dialogue, and cultural, academic, youth, scientific, and other exchanges between their peoples'. Indeed, the agreement holds substantial promise precisely because both parties recognize the need to reach out on a societal level, not just a governmental level."

David Makovsky, The Washington Institute

Building on a New Momentum : Achieving Peace in the Middle East

"To all of Israel's friends in the Middle East – those who are with us today and those who will join us tomorrow – I say, salaam aleichem, peace unto thee, shalom."

"[This day] brings hope to all of the children of Abraham."

"The blessings of peace that we make today will be enormous,” he continued, “first because this peace will eventually expand to include other Arab states, and ultimately, it can end the Arab-Israel conflict once and for all."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 15 September 2020

 

L to R: Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Abdullatif Al Zayani, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump and United Arab Emirates (UAE) Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed participate in the signing ceremony of the Abraham Accords. September 15, 2020   (photo credit: REUTERS/TOM BRENNER)

"[The accord will] change the course of history, [it marks] the dawn of a new Middle East."

"Together these agreements will serve as the foundation for a comprehensive peace across the entire region, something which nobody thought was possible, certainly not in this day and age."

"These agreements prove that the nations of the region are breaking free from failed approaches of the past. Today's signing sets history on a new course and there will be other countries very very soon that will follow these great leaders."

U.S. President Donald Trump

The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain were never at war with Israel. Their military arms never formed a coalition with Middle East Arab nations like Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Jordan to march on Israel with the intention of destroying it. And while most Arab countries expelled their Jewish citizens and confiscated their properties when Israel we re-formed as a nation in 1948, neither of the Gulf countries removed citizenship from their Jewish populations. Bahrain had a Jewish parliamentarian, Houda Ezra Ebrahim Nonoo.

 

As a Bahrainian parliamentarian she was appointed Ambassador to the United States from 2008 to 2013, by decree of Foreign Affairs Minister Khaled Ben Ahmad Al=Khalifa. Civil relations between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain through behind-the-scene arrangement has been ongoing for years. What their successive and simultaneous peace accords with Israel succeeded in doing was formalizing a warming relationship into a universally recognized position of neighbourly acceptance.

 

The accord, named the Abraham Accord, takes its name from the historical Biblical recognition that Arabs and Jews emerged from the same source in the Middle East. The Old Testament patriarch Abraham and his wife Sarah in their old age finally bearing a son, Isaac, and an already-existing son of Abraham and a handmaiden of Sarah's, Ishmael, becoming the forbears of Jews and Arabs respectively. And that out of monotheistic Judaism came Christianity with the birth of the Jewish sage Jesus, and then the latecomer religion Islam. All three make up the Abrahamic trio.

 

Equally behind-the-scenes interventions and guidance by the Trump administration working to develop further a formal acknowledgement of acceptance of Israel  and peace between neighbours has resulted in the two Gulf nations agreeing to sign a formal concordance of peace, partially symbolic, and wholly reflective of the fact that the region needed to move away from its tradition of hostility to the presence of the historical-to-the-present position of the State of Israel. The Trump administration succeeded where previous administrations all failed to achieve that goal.

 

A group of paratroopers surrounds then-IDF chief rabbi
Shlomo Goren at the Western Wall on June 7, 1967.

 

And they did so by abandoning the expectation that no Arab country would take measures to normalize their relations with Israel until the issue of Palestinian statehood alongside Israel materialized, other than the peace agreements signed between Israel and Egypt on Israel's return of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, captured in the 1967 war when Egypt marched with Jordan and Syria against Israel as part of a combined Arab army. Jordan followed years later. Israel retains the Golan Heights from which Syrian forces had continually attacked Israel from above.

 

 

The only non-Arab Muslim country in the Middle East, Shiite Iran, whose brand of Islam seeks ascendancy over the majority Sunni Muslim Arab nations, has become a threat to the balance of power and the security and stabilization of the Middle East. The Islamic Republic of Iran's interference in Arab nations, from Lebanon where it established Shia Hezbollah, to Syria where it supports the Alawite Shia minority regime against the Sunni majority, and Yemen where Houthi Shia rebels have torn the country apart, and its dedication to achieving nuclear supremacy concerns their Arab Sunni and Jewish Israel neighbours mightily.

Concerns that have brought Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and Oman a little closer to Israel, viewed as a strong opponent of Persian Iran's agenda. The Palestinian agenda has gradually receded into the background in the face of the perceived threat from Iran and the need to present a united opposition to its plans, opposing Saudi Arabian stewardship of Mecca and Medina for one thing. For another, the failure, one after another, of the Palestinian Authority and its predecessor Yasser Arafat, to make good on their professed wish to achieve nationhood -- by accepting their Jewish neighbour unconditionally.

All of which conspired over time to reduce the fixation of the Arab League in its violent hostility to Israel's presence, in ostensible support of the Palestinian 'cause'. A cause which has proven time and time again that it is not peace with Israel that consumes its attention to the future, but the destruction of Israel to enable the Palestinian leadership to claim the heritage geography on which Israel sits as 'Palestinian', including the ancient Judean city of Jerusalem.

President Trump's negotiations with other Arab nations appears to be bearing fruit, with rumours of other Arab states like Morocco in North Africa reaching the decision-point of agreeing it to be past time to part with the antipathies of the past and welcome a future of shared geography, trade opportunities, sharing of future technologies to benefit and enrich the experience of all nations in the region. While the Palestinian Authority and Hamas fume and threaten both Israel and those whom they claim have betrayed them, they betray their own existential interests.