Abraham Accords: A Year Later

ERETZ

RON KAMPEAS/JTA

Jared Kushner, fourth from the right, poses with the ambassadors from Israel and the UAE and others at an event marking the Abraham Accords anniversary.

Abraham Accords: One Year Later

RON KAMPEAS JTA

Jared Kushner had plenty of folks to praise at an event in Washington Sept. 14 marking the first anniversary of the Abraham Accords, the deals he brokered normalizing relations between Israel and four Arab countries.

There were the ambassadors from Israel and two of the Arab lands, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. There were his Trump administration colleagues who worked through the agreement. There were even some Democrats.

Together, it was a remarkable show of comity over Middle East policy at a time when Republicans and Democrats seem further apart than ever.

For Kushner, the priority was to uphold bipartisan backing for the accords as a means of expanding them. The accords have “achieved a bipartisan consensus, and this is very, very important,” he said.

Rep. Deutch (D-Fla.), the chairman of the House Middle East subcommittee, gave Kushner’s claim credence.

“It’s impossible not to be optimistic one year in,” he told reporters afterward. “The Biden administration is committed to strengthening and building upon the Abraham Accords and that, of course, means bringing more countries to the table.” Here’s an update on the Accords so far:

THE UAE

The United Arab Emirates deal is the biggest success of the four, and Israel and the UAE have already exchanged official ambassadors. The UAE has rolled out the red carpet for top Israeli officials, including Foreign Minister Yair Lapid.

Commercial ties are also thriving. A massive UAE investment in Israel’s offshore natural gas extraction is going ahead. Tens of thousands of Israelis visited the UAE in the months after the signing. A kosher food industry is blossoming in Dubai.

There is still one important point of tension: Israel’s military actions against the Palestinians.

BAHRAIN

Bahrain, which houses a Jewish community that’s more than a century old and which has had quiet relations with Israel and the pro-Israel community since the 2000s at least, did not need a lot of convincing to buy into the accords. Two months after the signing, Bahrain’s commerce minister was in Jerusalem formalizing already existing commercial ties.

Bahrain has named an ambassador to Israel, but has not yet established an embassy in Israel. Houda Nonoo, who in the 2000s made history as the first Jewish ambassador from an Arab country to Washington, said, “I believe that the growing partnerships between Bahrain and Israel will lead to sustainable peace in the region.”

MOROCCO

There’s a huge Moroccan Jewish community in Israel that has since the 1990s traveled back to the country on pilgrimages. And it has a large remnant Jewish community. A number of Moroccan Jews are advisers to King Mohammed VI. Morocco and Israel have existing commercial and, reportedly, security ties.

The countries have so far exchanged envoys and have launched for the first time ever direct commercial flights.

But the overwhelmingly pro-Palestine Moroccan citizens are not thrilled about the relationship. Israeli violence in Jerusalem and Gaza in May 2021 did not help the matter and led to numerous protests across the country.

SUDAN

Sudan is another country that has long had sub rosa ties with Israel; it played a critical role in the 1980s in the wave of Ethiopian Jewish immigration.

Right now, its deal with Israel is stuck, not because any of the parties are having second thoughts. Sudan’s government is contending with internal tensions as it transitions to democracy that have frustrated its overall efforts to engage with the international community.

WHO’S NEXT?

The big domino that could lead to a cascade of mutual recognition in the Arab and Muslim worlds is Saudi Arabia.

But that’s not likely to happen soon: Lawmakers in Congress, mostly Democrats but a number of Republicans as well, see the country as toxic because of its human rights abuses, including its murder of a U.S.-based journalist in 2018, and because of its Yemen war interventions.

That said, there are a number of countries that already have informal ties with Israel that could easily transition to full-blown ties, among them Oman, Mauritania, Indonesia and Qatar.