On September 15 2020 the US, UAE, Bahrain and Israel signed a joint normalization treaty named The Abraham Accords Declaration. The treaty normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and later three additional Arab states. This was the first formal agreement between Arab states and Israel. The Accords came out of a conference held in Warsaw in 2019 that focused on countering Iran in the region. The conference was the first time since 1991 that an Israeli leader and Arab leaders were in the same room together! This was material to moving towards normalization of relationships in the Middle East between Israel and the Arab states. After Bahrain and the UAE, Sudan, Morocco and Oman followed with their own set of agreements in 2021. The agreements involved economic promises from the US and commitments by the US to recognize various pieces of sovereignty in the region among other arrangements.
"The accords were named to emphasize the shared belief in the Prophet Abraham in Judaism and Islam" (Tahmizian Meuse, Alison)
The Biden administration has renamed the treaty efforts the Normalization Treaties and will continue to encourage other Arab states to join. Despite Israeli aggression towards Palestinians i the last several weeks, the effort to normalize will continue.
"Israel’s disproportionate use of force against the Palestinians bothered its newest Arab partners but not enough to question the normalization of relations created by last year’s Abraham Accords. Those diplomatic deals triggered billions of dollars of economic activity and bolstered national security for Israel and the four Arab countries involved. No one was interested in sacrificing those gains, even during a war that killed around 250 Palestinians, including 66 children. It was an early test of the theory that peace in the Middle East would be attained not in exchange for land but for the sake of business and mutual protection against common enemies." (Anchal Vohra, Foreign Policy Magazine, June 8, 2021)
For more on these Accords please see the following links. Please note the opinions expressed in these pieces are those of the authors and not of Track Two
