New Delhi: Can the conflict between the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israel scuttle one of the most hard-won geopolitical battles for the Middle East this decade — a series of treaties for the normalisaton of ties between Tel Aviv and the Arab world? As Israel continues its retaliatory attacks in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, that’s the pressing question on the minds of several geopolitical observers.
On Saturday, Hamas launched an aerial and ground attack on Israel at a scale not seen in 50 years. The development prompted Israel to mount a counteroffensive named ‘Swords of Iron’, pounding the 42-km Gaza Strip in retaliatory strikes. Over 1,000 people have been killed in both Israel and Gaza, according to media reports.
Brokered by the Trump administration, the Abraham Accords is a series of agreements signed by Israel with four Arab nations — the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Morocco, Bahrain, and Sudan — between September 2020 and January 2021.
The treaties were a significant development, especially in light of the past wars fought between the two sides over the Palestine question. According to Muddassir Quamar, an associate professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University’s (JNU) Centre for West Asian Studies, the Abraham Accords was a platform that “created trust between Israel and Arab nations”, allowing for economic, cultural, and security dependence between them and helping them with peaceful coexistence and greater regional integration.
Although Saudi Arabia wasn’t part of the treaty, ties between the two countries have been growing lately, with the two holding official talks.
According to some experts ThePrint spoke to, the attacks could complicate the ‘two-state solution’, which forms the bedrock of the Abraham Accords.
A proposed framework for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the ‘two-state solution’ envisions establishing two states for two peoples — Israel for the Jewish people and Palestine for the Palestinian people.
Here’s everything to know about the accords and what the ongoing war means for the future of Israel-Arab ties.
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The Abraham Accords
According to Arjun Hardas, the India representative of the Jewish advocacy group American Jewish Committee (AJC), the accords are a “‘game changer” in the region, providing new opportunities for direct flights, people-to-people exchanges, and a better investment climate — all of which has led to investment and growth in the region.
In a televised speech after the attack Saturday, Ismail Haniyeh, a top leader of Hamas mocked the treaties. “All the normalisation agreements that you signed with that entity cannot resolve this (Palestinian) conflict,” he said in the speech.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group with roots in the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, also criticised talks with Israel. The Hamas attacks, the group said in a statement, are a “decisive response to Israel’s continued occupation and a message to those seeking normalisation with Israel”.
Significantly, the name Abraham Accords is rooted in the common belief in Abraham as the patriarch of all Abrahamic religions — particularly Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Although the Palestinian conflict has been simmering since after the First World War, it was the United Nations’ proposal to split Palestine in 1947 into separate Jewish and Arab states that first sparked a direct confrontation between Jews and the Arab world. Arab nations collectively rejected the proposition.
In 1948, after Britain withdrew its mandate and left Palestine, the state of Israel was created, causing four Arab states — Egypt, Iraq, Transjordan, and Syria — to invade it.
Over the years, Arab states and Israel have faced off several times — most notably during the Suez Crisis in 1956, the Six-Day War in 1967, the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and the 1982 Lebanon War, when Israel invaded the country.
The wars were primarily fought over the two-state solution — that is, the establishment of a Jewish and an Arab state in the areas of the former British Mandate of Palestine. As a result of these conflicts, a large majority of Arab nations refused to recognise Israel as a state.
In 1967, just after the Six-Day War fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab states, the Arab League passed a resolution against Israel at a summit held at Sudan’s Khartoum. In the resolution, which eventually came to be known as the ‘The Three No’s’, the League resolved to have “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, and no negotiations with Israel”.
As a result of this, ties between Israel and the Arab world were simply non-existent for decades.
This first changed in 1978 with the Camp David Accords — a treaty between Egypt and Israel to normalise ties. In 1994, Jordan signed a peace agreement with Israel.
Despite this, it wasn’t until 2020 and the Abraham Accords that more Arab countries began to publicly resume diplomatic ties with Israel.
The accords have two parts to it — a declaration that calls for peace and coexistence in the Middle East and the bilateral agreements built upon the declaration.
“The Abraham Accords is a platform built upon two pillars — the acceptance of Israel as a legitimate state and the eventual resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict,” JNU associate professor Quamar told ThePrint. “They recognise Israel as a regional actor and allow for further regional cooperation, such as the creation of I2U2 (a bloc consisting of India, Israel, UAE, and the US) to be established.”
But steps towards normalisation of Arab-Israel ties, while incremental, predated the final accords, Quamar added.
Significantly, the three Arab states who have signed the accords with Israel — UAE, Morocco, and Bahrain — called for a de-escalation of the situation between Hamas and Israel and a resumption of the process to a two-state solution.
Bahrain and UAE Monday reportedly went a step further and condemned the kidnapping of Israeli civilians by Hamas.
Turning point of Arab-Israel ties
According to Quamar, three aspects motivated the transition of ties between Israel and the Arab world — the geopolitical, the economic, and the role of the US in the region.
“The past two decades have seen a geopolitical shift in the region, starting with the Arab Spring in 2011, which first moved the needle from confrontational to the need for diplomacy in the region,” Quamar told ThePrint.
The Arab Spring was a series of anti-government protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions that first began in Tunisia and eventually spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s in response to corruption and economic stagnation.
Quamar also explained how the Arab Spring and the COVID-19 pandemic led to economic challenges in the region. “The governments in the Middle East were quick to recognise the need for regional integration to solve the most pressing economic challenges,” Quamar said.
Another catalyst was the Arab states’ economic need — according to the associate professor, these nations recognised the need to shift from an oil-based economy and acknowledged that Israel was a key player in aiding this transition.
“There is one more reason that motivated the Arab states to be open to working with Israel — the role of the US as a regional security guarantor,” he said. “The US has changed its approach to the region by looking for its partners to step up and carry some part of the burden in the larger security architecture.”
According to Quamar, Arab states and Israel have converging interests, especially when it comes to security. Chief among them is preventing the rise of radical Islamist organisations like the Muslim Brotherhood, he said.
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Future of Abraham Accords
Some geopolitical experts fear the latest developments in Israel and Gaza could have thrown a spanner in the works for the growing ties between the Arab world and Israel.
“An attack such as the one Hamas has carried out against Israel would disrupt ongoing talks between Israel and future partners,” Hardas of the American Jewish Committee told ThePrint, adding that Iran and Hamas “want nothing more than to prevent Israeli integration in the region”.
But Quamar disagrees. He believes the current situation is a temporary setback, and talks between Israel and nations like Saudi Arabia, which isn’t part of the accords, will still continue.
But he conceded that the two-state solution — the foundation on which the Abraham Accords rest — could be more complicated.
According to Nadeem Ahmed Moonakal, a research scholar at the Rasanah International Institute for Iranian Studies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, regardless of the impact of the ongoing Gaza conflict, governments continue to face pressure to address it since the Palestinian issue “has been one of the most important political issues on the Arab streets”.
“Of course, the degree to which the regimes and governments in power respond to the issue varies depending on the geopolitical and security context — especially as the regional powers in the Middle East — continue to have diverging views concerning Hamas and Hezbollah,” Moonakal told ThePrint.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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