Arab-Israel normalization faces major test after Qatar attack

Israeli and US officials have expressed confidence that they can weather Arab criticism and what they see as a temporary freeze in normalization efforts. Bloomberg

In August 2023, Israel’s then-Energy Minister Israel Katz visited the synagogue at the Abrahamic Family House in the United Arab Emirates, a sign of warming ties between the two countries under the 2020 US-brokered Abraham Accords.

Hamas launched its deadly attack on Israel two months later, sparking the country’s devastating campaign in Gaza — and few Israeli officials have since been welcomed publicly by Abu Dhabi. Five years after the historic accords — US President Donald Trump’s signature foreign-policy achievement — Israel has struck five Middle Eastern countries, alienated most of its allies and reawakened the region to the Palestinian cause.

Since Israel began its war in Gaza, UAE President Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed has refused to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to people familiar with the matter. Barely a day goes by without the government of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman — who in the weeks before Oct. 7 said he was ready to meet Netanyahu if necessary to finalize a deal with the US that would culminate in normalization — condemning Israel or accusing it of genocide.

Trump, who toured the Abrahamic Family House earlier this year, has been determined to expand the Accords, but that seems all but impossible at the present time.

“Two years of this has incinerated the tender shoots of public sentiment in some places that were at least amenable, maybe not enthusiastic, to their leadership’s” move toward normalization, said Barbara Leaf, assistant secretary of state in former US President Joe Biden’s administration and now senior international policy advisor at law firm Arnold and Porter.

“In the broader region there’s complete rage,” she said, putting the chances for any “wider normalization” at “none.”

Israel’s unprecedented airstrike on Hamas leaders in Qatar’s capital, Doha, earlier this month has set the region even further on edge, prompting US-allied and resource-rich Gulf states to convene a series of urgent joint-defense meetings to assess the threats posed by Israel, according to a statement issued by the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council on Thursday.

That’s similar to how they’ve reacted in the past to the menace from Iran and its network of proxy militant groups across the region.

There’s even talk now both openly and behind closed doors in many regional capitals that it’s actually Israel — not Iran, which has been weakened since Oct. 7 — that represents the greatest danger to peace and stability.

“Today, it is not only about the occupation of Palestinian lands or the genocide in Gaza, but also about Israel’s expansionism posing a major threat to regional countries,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said in an interview with Qatari media last week, referring to Netanyahu’s recent comments about embracing an expansionist “Greater Israel” vision.

Israel’s increasingly aggressive posture in the region, which includes top ministers openly talking about fully occupying Gaza and completely annexing the West Bank, has forced even countries that have longstanding peace agreements with it to ponder their own treaties.

Israeli action “obstructs any prospects for new peace agreements, even aborting existing” ones, warned Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi during an extraordinary summit in Doha on Monday, attended by 57 Arab and Muslim countries.

Egypt was the first Arab country to recognize Israel in 1979. Both Qatar and Egypt, at the behest of the US, are working to mediate an end to the Gaza war.

Authorities in Cairo may reevaluate their peace treaty with Israel should the threat of large-scale displacement of Palestinians into Egypt’s Sinai peninsula happen, said an Egyptian official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

There’s a similar mood in Jordan, which made peace with Israel in 1994 and now sees plans to annex more land and relocate Palestinians in the adjacent West Bank as an existential threat, according to Marwan Muasher, the country’s former foreign minister.

Israel’s actions in Gaza and the region — striking Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iran and Qatar over the past year — go “beyond any credible argument of self-defense,” said Muasher, who currently serves as vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

This has not only engendered greater hostility toward normalization but will lead to pressure on governments to go beyond symbolic gestures — like recognizing Palestinian statehood — and take punitive measures against Israel, he added.

The final communique of the Doha summit called on Muslim states to consider imposing sanctions on Israel and even severing diplomatic and economic ties.

Israeli and US officials have expressed confidence that they can weather Arab criticism and what they see as a temporary freeze in normalization efforts.

“We remain optimistic that President Trump’s strong leadership can expand the circle of peace,” a State Department spokesperson said.

“He believes this unfortunate incident could serve as an opportunity for peace,” a White House spokeswoman added, referring to the Doha strikes.

Still, many believe Oct. 7 and its aftermath have exposed the limits of the Abraham Accords, which aimed to separate normalization from the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“The UAE has felt the Abraham Accords were a way to change strategy but it’s a mixed bag in terms of what it has achieved,” said Anna Jacobs, non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute.

The UAE joined the Accords during Trump’s first term largely because it wanted to champion a new regional narrative beyond perpetual conflict.

Abu Dhabi has sought to focus on its global trade and investment ambitions and national security priorities, while deepening defense and commercial ties with its most important ally, the US.

Similar thinking underpinned Saudi Arabia’s decision to start talks with the Biden administration on a three-way deal that would include diplomatic recognition of Israel. Riyadh’s main demands were a binding defense pact with Washington and Israeli acquiescence to an “irreversible pathway” to Palestinian statehood.

All of that changed as Israel’s strategy in Gaza became clear. Saudi Arabia has now put Palestinian statehood — increasingly of concern among young people in a country where half the population is under 30 — at the center of any normalization despite pressure from Trump to join the Accords.

At the same time, Israeli belligerence has pushed Gulf states to deepen engagement with Iran while trying not to get caught in the crossfire between the two following June’s 12-day war. Many worry hostilities will resume but they’ve also benefited from the big blows Israel has dealt to Tehran and its proxies.

While the UAE remains committed to staying in the Accords, it has warned that Israel annexing more West Bank land is a “red line.”

In a statement to Bloomberg News on Saturday, a senior UAE official conceded the Abraham Accords were “under enormous strain” and that Abu Dhabi was considering all options, without being specific, if Israel committed the “strategic error” of proceeding with its plans to make Palestinian statehood impossible.

“Everything is on the table, and everyone agrees that the stakes could not be higher,” said the official. “Our focus is on preventing the worst case scenario; we must avoid steps that would wipe out years of progress towards deeper regional integration, and peace.”

Still, regardless of the Israeli attack on Qatar — and how Washington was unwilling or unable to stop it — Abu Dhabi and other Gulf capitals see no credible alternative to the US as guarantor of their security and defense, according to a UAE official.

“The Abraham Accords are connected with good relations with the US,” said Paul Salem, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “Walking away from something you signed with the Trump administration won’t just affect your relations with Israel.”