The Abraham Accords’ implications for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

This is not merely lip-service. The Arab states, just like Israel, are stuck with the Palestinians. They may disagree with them on a host of issues, especially with Hamas's extremism, but they cannot and will not indefinitely accept or tolerate the brutal Israeli occupation. The recent conflagration between Israeli soldiers and police and Palestinian youth at the Temple Mount should serve as a reminder to the Israelis as to where the Arab world really stands.

The occupation humiliates not only the Palestinians but the Arab states as well. They can swallow only so much of Israel's gross human right abuses, settlers' unprovoked violence against innocent Palestinians, and the killings of hundreds of Palestinians each year, often without any justification. And if there were to be a major violent eruption between Israel and the Palestinians, which is only a question of time, the Arab states with no exception, will side with the Palestinians regardless of who instigated the violence.

Israel's lost perspective

Every Israeli who does not seek to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict should ask themselves where Israel will be 15-20 years down the line. Do they really believe that the Arab states will gradually forget about the Palestinians? Do they think that Israel's founders envisioned a Jewish state that would permanently occupy Palestinian land in the West Bank, maintain an indefinite blockade on Gaza in the east, and systematically and openly discriminate against Israeli Arab citizens? How many more generations of warriors does Israel want to raise and train, only to rain havoc on the Palestinians? What damage has this already done and will do to the Jewish Israeli character? The one and only Jewish state will become a pariah state and hit a new moral bottom, constantly threatened and living by the gun.

The promise of the Abraham Accords

The recent free trade agreement between Israel and the UAE and the extent of their bilateral trade is extremely significant, as such an agreement would further cement their relations. Moreover, the UAE along with Bahrain and other Gulf states are discussing the prospect of a security alliance, which the Biden administration fully supports. To be sure, the ties in many spheres between Israel and the Gulf states will continue to grow as long as no major violent Israeli-Palestinian conflagration erupts.

However, regardless of how desperate the Gulf states may be for Israeli technology, intelligence, trade, and knowhow, for them the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem remains sine qua non to a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace. To be sure, as long as there is no Israeli-Palestinian peace based on a two-state solution, the current normalization process will remain fragile at best, subject to the changing geopolitical environment as well as to the intensity and the pitfalls of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Now that new elections are scheduled to be held in October, every Israeli should remember that Israel's ultimate national security rests on peace with Palestinians. To that end, they should elect leaders who commit to ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Abraham Accords should be viewed then as the building block on which to erect a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace that includes the Palestinians, and not as Accords that expunge the Palestinians' rightful demand for an independent state of their own.

The Abraham Accords offers Israel the unique opportunity to move in that direction, and any Israeli leader who does not realize that is forfeiting the promise of Israel's founders and the premise on which the state was created.