Next week, President Biden will travel to Israel and Saudi Arabia aEUR” for his first visit to the Middle East since he entered the White House.
While the president is not afraid to criticize a variety of his predecessors’ policies, he fully embraces one pillar of Donald Trump’s Middle East policy aEUR”, the Abraham Accords. The Trump White House brokered those deals in 2020 to normalize relations with Israel and several Arab countries including Bahrain, UAE, and Morocco.
This was a major break from the recent history of Arab nations, which had made it clear that they would not negotiate Israel’s behalf until Palestinians were granted an independent state. The Arab-Israeli conflict was closely linked to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. One could not be solved without the other.
The Abraham Accords, however, separated the two issues and the Biden White House has accepted that framework.
Biden’s foreign policy has been focused on Russia and China, as well as rebuilding European alliances. Experts say Biden’s Middle East goals are pragmatic. Biden has not made grand plans to broker an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, but instead wants to see stability and security in the Middle East, which does not explode into violence. His team views the Abraham Accords to be a tool to promote stability.
The Biden White House is embracing the accords and trying to build upon them. President Obama and his team frequently speak of “integrating” Israel into the Middle East, a region that has always viewed Israel as an intruder in its neighborhood.
Biden stated that part of the purpose of his trip to the Middle East is to “deepen Israel’s integration in the region”, which he believes he’ll be able do. This was in response to a question about the upcoming trip. “And that’s the reason why Israel leaders have stood so strongly in support of my going to Saudi Arabia.”
Biden will travel from Israel to Saudi Arabia directly. This is significant as both countries do not currently allow direct flights. Biden’s trip could result in some incremental change in Saudi Arabia’s relations with Israel, including allowing Israeli commercial aircraft to fly above Saudi Arabia.
However, experts in foreign policy aren’t predicting that the two countries will resume normal relations soon due to the current domestic politics in Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Jon Alterman, an ex-State Department official and now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies during a preview for reporters, stated that “Why I have very modest hopes for Israeli-Saudi reconciliation [is] cause they are not in a place to give anything on Palestinians and anything else to Saudis to make it more appealing.”
Experts say that these small steps could lead to normalization in the future.
Last week, a senior Israeli official stated to reporters that normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia would make a significant difference in the region.
The official stated that it was important to get Saudi Arabia to move, even incrementally, towards normalization of relations with Israel in the contexts of fighting back against radical forces in the Middle East and Iran.
Trump revealed the Abraham Accords during the presidential campaign heat in September 2020.
Trump declared, “After decades and division and conflict, it is the dawn of a new Middle East,” as he received officials from Israel, Bahrain, and the UAE at the White House to sign this agreement.
Trump stated, “These agreements show that the nations in the region are free from the failed approaches to the past.”
These agreements were the first Arab countries to sign a deal with Israel in 26-years. The countries had never been in an official economic or personal relationship until that date.
Joe Biden, the then-candidate for the presidency, was trying to show that he would govern differently from Trump at the time.
In this instance, however, he was quick praise the accords. Biden stated that he was happy about the news and would continue to “build upon these steps” if elected.
Biden’s White House didn’t initially place much emphasis on the accords once it was in power. In March, however, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a summit in Israel made clear where the administration stood.
Blinken stated that “we are fully committed to expanding cooperation via the Abraham Accords and building upon the remarkable progress Israel, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, as well as Morocco, have made in such a brief period of time.”
He stated, “Simply put normalization is becoming a new normal in the region.”
Blinken also highlighted how Biden’s approach was different than Trump’s in handling diplomatic relations in the region.
Blinken stated, “We must be clear that these regional agreements aren’t a substitute for progress among Palestinians and Israelis.”
This distinction was a sign that the Biden administration recognized that normalization between Arab countries and Israel cannot be done at the cost of Palestinians, said Khaled Elgindy (a former adviser to the Palestinian leadership and now at The Middle East Institute).
Elgindy claimed that Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, then-Israeli Prime Minister, had used the accords in order to “marginalize” the Palestinians, to weaken their position, and to remove leverage to force them to the negotiation table.
Elgindy stated that he remains skeptical about whether the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts can be kept apart. Others disagree.
The 2002 Arab Peace Initiative was a call to arms by the Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia: They would normalize relations only with Israel if they agreed to an independent Palestinian state, Israeli withdrawal form 1967-occupied territory, and a solution for Palestinian refugees.
The Abraham Accords ended that consensus. The Arab countries demonstrated that they were open to bypassing the Palestinian issue. This was a significant shift in the region.
“We have changed the paradigm. We said: “Alright, let’s do business. And hopefully once we have more Arab voices and more influence, we can have greater influence on Israel as you talk about the two-state Solution,” said Yousef Al-Otaiba, the ambassador of the UAE to the United States. He was closely involved in the negotiations for his country’s agreement.
There is wide consensus in Washington that the agreements are worth exploring. Al-Otaiba stated that he spoke to 24 members of Congress within the first 48 hours following the announcement of the UAE-Israel agreement. This is roughly half Republican and half Democrat.
“The question that I received from each of the 24 was, “What country is next?” He said.
Al-Otaiba, the UAE Ambassador, credited Trump officials aEUR”, including Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of the former president. He said that he believed the deal was possible because he had spoken with the right people at the right times. “All my engagement was with U.S. administration aEUR.” I did everything through the United States.
He stated that it was possible to extend the accords with a Democratic administration but that “it’s just going be a different way, different style and different technique.”
According to Aaron David Miller who worked under both Republican administrations as a Middle East negotiator, Trump used many tactics that Biden would probably not.
Trump, for example, announced via Twitter that the United States would support Morocco in a long-disputed territory of north Africa. It was related to Morocco signing the accords.
Miller now at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said, “I doubt that any Democratic administration would have sacrificed sovereignty over the Western Sahara for an upgrade of relations between Israel and Morocco.”
Trump’s transactional style.
