How the Abraham Accords are helping the Middle East come to terms with Israel’s existence
Most of the Middle East (Iran and its proxies and partners notwithstanding) now seeks some new paradigm, something pragmatic that will meet the demands of the people. Happily for Israel, its demography, geography and entrepreneurial economy are all suited to regional rapprochement.
Both Israel and its regional partners would do well to emphasize through its diverse citizenry that it’s not some colonial aberration but very much of the region — culturally, religiously and socially.
Arab leaders were willing to deal with Israel in part due to frustration with the Palestinian rejection of successive opportunities for peace deals. And while Palestinian leaders in the West Bank today call the Abraham Accords “a knife in the back,” the accords may offer job-hungry Palestinians the opportunities that their political leaders deny them.
It is Palestinian leaders, not the people, who benefit from the status quo. Arab states may play a role in this development: through direct investment, the creation of special economic zones in the West Bank or even pressure on the Palestinian Authority to revoke regulations that forbid Palestinians to work for Israeli settlers (as tens of thousands currently do).
International diplomatic pressure can be brought against countries such as Lebanon and Iraq to rescind their laws that forbid contact with Israelis. States in the region that are shifting toward openness might grant visas to adherents of Abrahamic faith communities to make pilgrimage to the holy sites of their faith. (Lebanese Christians, for example, cannot travel to Jerusalem, the most sacred site in Christianity, because of anti-Zionist laws that remain in place since modern Israel’s reconstitution.)
Finally, Western and regional governments might reduce or cut off aid to countries that refuse to rescind anti-normalization laws and teach antisemitism in schools or preach hatred through state-funded religious institutions.
Perhaps as a prelude to these steps, Western and regional partners can work behind the scenes with some governments of the region that exiled their Jewish communities after 1948 to grant special visitor visas to the descendants of those refugees, and to begin public education efforts that acknowledge the presence and cultural significance of those communities. Thousands of synagogues, cemeteries, schools and other structures attest to millennia of Jewish lives.
There are few places in the world as ethnically, culturally and linguistically diverse as Israel. For all the emphasis on Israel’s Europeanness, it is today, as in many ways it always was, principally a Middle Eastern nation. Israel’s neighbors who grasp this fact will benefit immensely — first through trade, then culture and perhaps one day through civil society and governance. Israel’s diverse citizenry, Israeli Arabs and Sephardim among others, may speed the process of regional rapprochement along as much as state-level diplomacy.
Israel Has Strengthened America Many Times Over the Years
“Israel did not grow strong because it had an American alliance. It acquired an American alliance because it had grown strong,” said Professor Walter Russell Mead, a leading historian of American foreign policy. He was right.Former IDF Military Intelligence Chief: We Don't Need a Middle East NATO
In 1948, Israel was misconstrued by the U.S. State Department as a burden upon the U.S. It believed the newborn state would be too feeble to withstand an all-out Arab military offensive, jeopardize U.S. ties with the Arab World and potentially turn pro-Soviet.
Since 1967, however, Israel has emerged as the most effective, reliable and democratic ally of the United States, as well as a formidable force multiplier.
In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel devastated the pro-Soviet Egyptian military. Egypt was then on its way to becoming a pan-Arab leader and aimed to topple the pro-U.S. regimes of the Arab oil-producing countries, at a time when the U.S. was heavily dependent on them for its energy needs. The resounding Israeli victory spared the United States a huge economic and national security setback, and denied the USSR a geostrategic gold mine.
Twenty-five U.S. military experts went to Israel to study the lessons of the Six-Day War and examine captured Soviet military systems. Their findings upgraded the performance of the U.S. armed forces and defense industries.
After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, a team of 50 American experts arrived in Israel, collecting information that benefited the U.S. military and American industry, bolstering the defense of Europe in the face of Soviet threats.
The December 1969 “Operation Rooster 53” highlighted Israel’s unique intelligence and battle tactic capabilities, which were shared with the U.S. An Israeli commando unit snatched an advanced Soviet P-12 radar system, which was stationed throughout the world, from Egypt. The Soviet radar was studied by Israel and transferred to the U.S., as were additional Soviet military systems, enhancing the capabilities of U.S. intelligence, special operations forces and defense industries.
Former IDF Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Tamir Heyman, now executive director of the Institute for National Security Studies, said that Israeli officials should lower their tone about a regional air defense system.
He waved off the suggestion of posting the Israeli Iron Dome systems and lasers in the UAE or other Abraham Accords countries as wildly unrealistic or relegated to the very distant future. Rather, he said the current air defense talk is about radar and sharing data relating to detecting threats.
On a technical level, Israel "can do a [regional] defense system immediately, without it being publicized, with the U.S. and with cooperation and reciprocal respect from all of those involved. We just attach all the radar systems and benefit from having more connected sensors." But he emphasized that "it is forbidden for Israel to lead it. The U.S. needs to lead."
Asked about a Middle East NATO, he said, "We don't need an alliance. They don't want it, and we don't....In NATO, if one country is attacked, everyone must counterattack the attacker. We don't want to be in this situation" where Israel is obligated to go to war on behalf of a Sunni Arab country.
"We don't want them to intervene [militarily to help Israel] - we don't need it; we do not want to rely on them." On the other hand, "We do have common threats. There are relative benefits to cooperation, but we need to do it quietly, under the table and with modesty....Do not talk about an alliance."