The New York Times Attacks The Abraham Accords, Pining For The Two-State Solution (Daled Amos) [update: AI propaganda analysis]

By Daled Amos

The Abraham Accords are perpetually in the news. Sometimes, the pundits suggest a new Arab country is about to join the accords. At other times, an analyst may criticize the whole idea of the accords. This week, The New York Times is attacking the Abraham Accords, claiming the agreement has not lived up to its name, never has, and perhaps never will. In a nutshell:

The 2020 agreements addressed diplomacy and commerce, not conflicts or the Palestinians. Predictions that the deals would produce regional peace were baseless, analysts say.

And those three analysts chosen for the article are very clear on what the problem is: 

o  Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute: “It’s got nothing to do with peace. Peace was the way it was branded, and marketed. But that doesn’t mean that it makes any sense. This was not an agreement that ends the war.”

o  Abdulaziz Alghashian, a Saudi researcher and senior nonresident fellow at the Gulf International Forum: “'Who is involved in this ‘regional peace’?' he said he had found himself asking supporters of the Abraham Accords. He said he realized that for some, it is a concept that relies on 'a complete avoidance of the Palestinian issue.'”

o  Marc Lynch, a political science and international affairs professor at George Washington University: "The Abraham Accords were premised on the notion of Arab-Israeli cooperation while skipping past the Palestinians, but 'that was always a mistake, and it wasn’t such a shock when Gaza proved it was a mistake.'” 

According to these analysts, the Abraham Accords are an agreement that fails to end "the [Palestinian] war," are a "complete avoidance of the Palestinian issue," and "skips past the Palestinians." That is their complaint in a nutshell. On the opposing side, the article presents the White House's opinion, but does not quote any of the scholars or analysts who support the Abraham Accords.

As for avoiding the "Palestinian issue," it is not as if Israel has been avoiding agreements with the Palestinian Arabs over all these years. If the analysts believe that Israel should be making even more concessions to the Palestinian Arabs, maybe they can suggest what those would be, along with what can be expected from the Palestinian Arabs--such as stopping payments to imprisoned terrorists. At no point in the article do the analysts, or the article itself, accuse Israel of ignoring Palestinian requests to sit and talk.

In the meantime, Israel lives in a tough neighborhood and has interests in that "regional peace" that go beyond just the Palestinian Arabs. While the article suggests, "In effect, the deals bypassed the central conflict, between Israel and the Palestinians," this overlooks Iran's role as the leading state sponsor of terrorism. It is well worth Israel's time to acquire alliances against Iran, contrary to The New York Times and its parochial view of the Middle East. 

Besides, the Palestinian Arabs have a stake in the region as well. As Aryeh Lightstone, US envoy to the Abraham Accords and advisor to Ambassador David Friedman, said in an interview in 2023:

We believe the problem is not the Palestinian people. The problem is the so-called leadership of the Palestinians. Anything that enfranchises the leadership is a mistake for the region and the Saudis see that also. If there is something that helps the Palestinians have better jobs and better opportunities, I think Israel would embrace it. I think the region should embrace it.

He goes on to suggest:

If it hadn't been for COVID and if we had had the support of the Abraham Accord countries also, then the Emiratis or Saudis or Moroccans could have come in and built Palestinian Arab businesses and industrial zones -- better than the US or Israel could do it.

The criticism that the Abraham Accords should not be labeled a "peace deal" is understandable. Of the three Arab countries--UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco--Israel has only been in conflict with 

Morocco, and even then only minimally during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. You can chalk up that "marketing" angle to having a president who is a businessman. Note that if you do a search for "Oslo Accords peace deal," you get 1,470 hits--even though those accords are an interim deal and are also not considered a peace deal per se.

However, the bias of the article goes beyond picking analysts who all share one opinion.

According to the article:

Sudan, often cited as a candidate to be the next Arab country to join, has not established diplomatic relations with Israel.

This is not accurate. Sudan signed the accords in January 2021 and also went on to repeal its 1958 law banning relations with Israel that April. What they did not do was formally recognize Israel. Sudan’s political instability following a 2021 coup and civil war since April 2023, stalled the process. The article refers to those problems, but cynically presents them as examples of issues in the region in the face of the accords, without ever mentioning the steps Sudan has taken short of establishing formal relations.

An even more ridiculous claim is that:

Years of overtures to persuade Saudi Arabia to join the accords have so far failed. The Biden administration took up that mantle fervently, pursuing a deal built on the United States granting major benefits to the kingdom.

This, of course, is nonsense.

This is the same Joe Biden who publicly called Saudi Arabia a pariah during the Democratic presidential debates:

I would make it very clear we were not going to, in fact, sell more weapons to them. We were going to, in fact, make them pay the price and make them in fact the pariah that they are. There's very little social redeeming value of in the present government in Saudi Arabia, and I would also as pointed out I would end the subsidies that we have and the sale of material to the Saudis, where they're going in and murdering children. And they're murdering innocent people, and so they have to be held accountable.

Biden did not "take up that mantle." He threw it in the face of the Saudis. and deliberately created distance between his Administration and Saudi Arabia. The Washington Free Beacon reported in June 2021 that the Biden State Department discouraged referring to the agreement by name. Things got so bad that when asked in May 2021, Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters:

We are not following the tactics of the prior administration. Aside from putting together a peace proposal that was dead on arrival, we don’t think [the previous administration] did anything constructive to really bring an end to the longstanding conflict in the Middle East.

This is why, in March 2023, the New York Times quoted the same analyst quoted above, Abdulaziz Alghashian, about the dislike the Saudis had for Biden:

Mr. Alghashian said it was unlikely that Saudi officials would actually facilitate a major foreign policy victory for Mr. Biden while he was still president, given their grievances with his administration.

“The Saudi ruling elite do not want Biden to be the American president to take credit for Saudi-Israeli normalization, but they don’t mind Biden taking the blame for its absence,” he said.

Even then, there were indications that Biden did not have his eye on the Abraham Accords, but on China:

Any U.S-Saudi deal to upgrade relations will have a major economic component. The source said the U.S. wants to make sure that such a deal keeps Saudi Arabia closer to the U.S. when it comes to competition with China.

So when the article goes on to make claims about "a sweeping bombardment of Gaza," two million Palestinians facing "desperate hunger," and "more than 50,000 have been killed" with only a single generous reference to Hamas terrorists as "the Palestinian militia that ruled Gaza and received backing from Iran, led a fierce attack in Israel that killed more than 1,000 people"--The New York Times whitewash does not surprise us.

The New York Times is still pining for the two-state solution.

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