The U.S.-led push to normalize relations between Israel and major Arab nations — started by President Trump’s Abraham Accords in 2020 and cautiously pursued since by President Biden — has been thrown into confusion by the surging clash between Israel and Hamas.
What’s worse, analysts say, is a primary goal of the Palestinian militant group and its Iranian backers in striking Israel was to derail the normalization push amid signs Saudi Arabia was moving closer to reshaping the political landscape of the region by establishing formal diplomatic ties with Israel.
It remains to be seen whether that goal has been achieved, given the Saudis’ long historical role as a protector of the Palestinians’ rights and the support the Palestinians enjoy in Arab popular opinion.
Some regional experts say the drive to normalize Israel’s relations with its neighbors has already suffered a blow, as the Biden administration now finds itself ramping up U.S. military support for Israel while simultaneously scrambling to prevent an escalation toward a major regional war.
“The buzz before this calamity was talk of a possible Saudi-Israel normalization deal,” said Brian Katulis, the vice president of policy at the Middle East Institute.
“The efforts to advance a more proactive diplomatic approach, including a possible Saudi-Israeli normalization deal, will be placed on the back-burner as the Biden team engages in crisis diplomacy and steps up security support to partners across the region,” Mr. Katulis wrote in an analysis for the think tank.
Biden administration officials had been quietly brokering indirect talks between the Israelis and Saudi Arabia, the wealthiest and most powerful of the Gulf Arab powers, during the months leading up to Hamas’ surprise attack that killed more than 2,000 Israelis and nearly two dozen Americans living in Israel.
The talks were part of Mr. Biden’s cautious embrace of the Abraham Accords brokered under Mr. Trump, who shifted U.S. policy away from long-elusive Israeli-Palestinian peace initiatives to focus instead on ending a decades-old diplomatic freeze between Israel and four Arab powers.
The accords, named after the prophet recognized by Judaism, Christianity and Islam, had brought normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan. It was the first official acknowledgment of Israel’s sovereignty by Arab nations since Egypt and Jordan broke from the rest of the Middle East to establish diplomatic ties with Israel in 1979 and 1994, respectively.
But oil-rich Saudi Arabia remained on the sidelines, citing ongoing concerns over Israel’s policies toward Palestinians, including the Israeli government’s support for aggressive Jewish settlement expansions in the West Bank on land Palestinians say they need for a future independent state.
Despite those concerns, there appeared to be momentum last month, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Mr. Biden on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly last month. Mr. Netanyahu made global headlines by asserting publicly that Israeli-Saudi normalization was “within our reach.”
Analysts say the momentum rankled Iran, which has also championed the Palestinian cause while underwriting militant groups hostile to Israel such as Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement. The Shiite Muslim theocracy is an enemy of Israel and has long positioned itself as the primary regional rival of the Sunni Muslim monarchy ruling Saudi Arabia. Iranian leaders are widely seen to fear the prospect of an Israeli-Saudi alliance against Tehran.
Iran has denied knowing about or helping plan the Hamas uprising against Israel, and the U.S. and Israeli governments have said in recent days that they have seen no intelligence that Tehran had a direct role in the surprise attack. But many say the gruesome Hamas rampage fit with the Iranian goal of derailing Israel’s normalization with the Arab world.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken embraced that narrative during a visit to Israel on Thursday.
“Who opposes normalization? Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran,” he told reporters. “I think that speaks volumes.”
At the same time, Mr. Blinken said he could only speculate about the goals of Hamas. “The simplest explanation may be the most compelling,” he said. “This is pure evil.”
A Saudi-Iran detente?
The extent to which the Israel-Hamas has derailed the Abraham Accords is still unclear.
Israeli Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates Amir Hayek told Reuters in an interview he believes the Abraham Accords are “very strong” and expressed gratitude towards the UAE for putting out a statement this week categorizing the Hamas attack as a “grave escalation.”
Morocco, however, is facing internal pressure amid pro-Palestinian protests in response to retaliatory Israeli airstrikes that have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza. And Sudan has moved this week to restore diplomatic relations with Iran.
Despite the appearance of Israeli-Saudi momentum last month, the Saudis have recently engaged in diplomacy of their own with Iran.
The two rivals formally restored diplomatic ties in a deal brokered by China in April. It was a notable step toward reconciliation following years of regional rivalry and acrimony over a war between the Saudi military and Iran-backed rebels in Yemen.
The Israel-Hamas clash appears to have sparked more reconciliation this week, with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman speaking by telephone for the first time since April. The two leaders spoke for 45 minutes, Iran’s official press reported Thursday.
According to Al Jazeera, a top Raisi advisor claimed on social media that the two “discussed the need to end war crimes against Palestine,” stressed “Islamic unity,” and agreed that the “[Israeli] regime’s crimes and the U.S. green light will cause destructive insecurity for the regime and backers.”
The official news service in Riyadh reported that the Saudi crown prince “expressed deep concern for the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza and its impact on civilians,” and said the kingdom was exerting “maximum effort to engage with all international and regional parties to halt the ongoing escalation.”
Some analysts say the pressures may go another way after the shock and fury over the Hamas attack recedes.
Alex Traiman, Jerusalem bureau chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, asserted in an interview that Saudi Arabia and other Arab powers seek normalization with Israel precisely because of the regional security threat posed by Iran.
“A major impetus for the Abraham Accords is the potential rise of a nuclear Iran,” said Mr. Traiman. “Iran is the head of the terror snake in the Middle East with proxies in Yemen, Iraq and Syria, and of course its main proxies Hezbollah and Hamas.”
“Arab countries are looking to Israel to be the only power that can deter or protect against the threat of a nuclear armed Iran,” he said. “They don’t trust the United States to protect against that threat. To the contrary, they see the U.S. as actually funding Iran and paving Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon.”
“This is now a big test for Israel,” Mr. Traiman added. “Saudi Arabia is looking to see whether Israel can essentially be defeated by Hamas, in which case, why does Saudi Arabia need to normalize with Israel? Or will Israel establish itself as the regional superpower and dismantle Hamas? If Israel does that, I think it brings normalization closer.”
Others see peril for Iran in the days ahead.
Alex Vatanka, who heads the Middle East Institute’s Iran Program, noted that Tehran is walking a “tightrope” by attempting to capitalize on the ongoing Israel-Hamas violence while claiming it had no responsibility for it.
“Iran likely sees the Hamas attack as a moment to stack the deck in the region, planting doubts in the minds of Israel’s leaders as well as those in Arab states pursuing normalization with Israel,” Mr. Vatanka wrote for the think tank this week.
Arab Center Washington D.C. Executive Director Khalil E. Jahshan has argued that the “clearest political message” of Hamas’ attack on Israel was “the one addressed to the ‘Camp of Normalizers’ — be they Israeli, Arab, Americans, or Europeans — that their plans to forge a ‘New Middle East’ without Palestine shall not pass unopposed.”
“History alone will be able to answer whether the military aspects of the Hamas attack and the Israeli response it has generated will help or hinder these political objectives,” Mr. Jahshan wrote in an analysis circulated by the center.
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.