In a wildly off-the-mark prediction by a man who was supposed to have had his finger on the Middle East pulse, then-Secretary of State John Kerry memorably said on December 4, 2016, that Israel would never reach a separate peace with any Arab nation without first signing an agreement with the Palestinians.
Not only would this not happen, he stressed, but he was completely sure it would not happen.
“I’ve heard several prominent politicians in Israel sometimes saying, well, the Arab world is in a different place now, we just have to reach out to them and we can work some things with the Arab world and we’ll deal with the Palestinians. No, no, no, and no,” Kerry said at the Saban Conference in 2016.
“There will be no advance and separate peace with the Arab world without the Palestinian process and Palestinian peace,” he continued with complete certainty. “Everybody needs to understand that. That is a hard reality.”
Four years later, Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed the Abraham Accords and were followed later by Morocco and Sudan.
Shapiro’s observations about the region
Two days after Kerry’s speech, Dan Shapiro, who would soon resign as US ambassador to Israel following Donald Trump’s election victory, gave a speech of his own to the Israel Policy Forum, where he made several observations about the Middle East.
Recent trends in the region have improved prospects for a positive role by Arab states, Shapiro acknowledged. “It is absolutely true, as Prime Minister Netanyahu and others have observed, that the alignment of interests between Israel and its Sunni Arab neighbors, with regard to the threats of Iran and ISIL, creates new opportunities for Israel to work with regional parties, including on the Palestinian issue.”
“At the same time,” he added, “as Secretary Kerry emphasized on Sunday, ‘there will be no advance and separate peace with the Arab world’ without progress toward Israeli-Palestinian peace. These two goals are much more likely to advance in parallel than in sequence.”
Seven years later, the State Department tapped Shapiro to fill the newly created position as its senior advisor for regional cooperation, looking to deepen what he publicly doubted and which his former boss said would never happen: separate agreements between Israel and Arab states without first solving the Palestinian issue. Shapiro’s appointement came two years after it was first reported that he was being considered for this role.
According to US Secretary of State Tony Blinken, Shapiro “will support US efforts to advance a more peaceful and interconnected region, deepen and broaden the Abraham Accords, and build the Negev Forum.”
This appointment comes as the Senate considers passing legislation that would create an ambassadorial-level position focused on promoting the Abraham Accords.
Shapiro’s thinking has obviously evolved a great deal since that speech in December 2016. In March, he testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs about building on the Abraham Accords. He was speaking as the head of an Atlantic Council forum aimed at expanding the accords, which he said he was “passionate about.”
No more veto power for Palestinians
The Abraham Accords brought a refreshing change by separating Israel’s progress with the Arab world from progress on the Palestinian track. This doesn’t mean that the Palestinian track is unimportant, but it avoids a situation where the Palestinians hold veto power over relations between Arab countries and Israel. Linking the two issues gives the Palestinians the ability to impede the development of relations between Israel and Arab countries, which is detrimental to both Israel and the Arab nations involved.
Because what if — as has turned out to be the case since the Oslo Accords — Israel and the Palestinians cannot reach an accord for various reasons? Should Israel and the Gulf States be enemies forever?
Kerry mistakenly presumed that the Arabs would always link the two issues. Except that they didn’t. And what has been positive is that the relationship between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco (Sudan is not genuinely a player here because of its internal turmoil) is that these ties have survived despite not only a lack of progress on the Palestinian front but even during periods of increased tension and even mini-wars in Gaza. The decoupling has held.
At the same time, the pace of development of ties has slowed since the current government — with its hard-right-wing ministers — came into power in December. One indication is that Netanyahu has not yet been invited to visit the UAE. Another sign is that a meeting of the foreign ministers of the Negev Forum — Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Egypt, and the US — which was supposed to have met earlier this year, has been postponed repeatedly, most recently last week.
Yediot Ahronot reported two weeks ago that the US sent messages to Israel that the Negev Forum was postponed due to Israel’s announcement of the approval of plans for some 4,600 new housing units in the settlements and an expedited process to approve settlement building plans.
If that is indeed the case, then it is something Shapiro will immediately need to address, as it brings linkage to the center of the Abraham Accords — something that could have a very corrosive effect.
The inclusion of Saudi Arabia in the Abraham Accords
In his testimony in March, Shapiro spoke of the importance of widening the Abraham Accords to include Saudi Arabia but also said this should not be done at all costs.
“Saudi-Israeli normalization is certainly in the United States’ interests, and we should be prepared to contribute, as the United States has done in nearly all previous Arab-Israeli agreements,” he said. “But it cannot be divorced from the US-Saudi relationship, nor from other US interests that we must protect.”
He said that if the US will be expected to provide a wider range of benefits to the Saudis, “there will also be things the United States needs from the Saudis, such as confidence they will work to maintain a stable oil market and will not act in ways that run counter to core US interests, such as ensuring Russia is isolated over its unjustified invasion of Ukraine or preventing increased Chinese military presence in the Middle East.”
Although Saudi Arabia is obviously the most important “prize,” he said efforts should be made to bring other Arab countries into the accords, specifically mentioning Oman, Qatar, and Mauritania.
In addition, he said, “[ISLAMIC] countries outside the region, such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Somalia, and Niger should be offered opportunities for gradual, low-level business and people-to-people engagements with Israel, which, over time, can grow and lower the barriers to more official exchanges and normalized ties.”
Just as Shapiro’s approach on this issue has evolved, so has the Biden Administration’s attitude. It has gone from having trouble saying the very words “Abraham Accords” and not celebrating their signing on the first anniversary to now appointing a special envoy to deepen and widen them.
In April 2021, less than two months after Biden was sworn into office, the State Department spokesman Ned Price took pains at a daily press briefing to eschew even using the name “Abraham Accords.” The Washington Free Beacon reported that the State Department circulated emails saying the accords should be referred to as “normalization agreements,” apparently not wanting to bestow any credit for doing anything noteworthy on the Trump administration.
At the first-year anniversary, the Biden administration, which had up until then voiced only faint praise for the accords, left it to Jared Kushner and David Friedman to host separate events in honor of the agreements — one in Washington and one in Jerusalem.
Another sign of the Biden team’s initial lack of enthusiasm was its delay in agreeing to a $23 billion arms sale to the UAE as part of the accords, as well as Biden only mentioning the accords in passing during his Oval Office meeting with then-Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in August 2021.
Writing in Foreign Policy in September 2021, Jonathan Ferziger, who at the time was a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, attributed this lack of enthusiasm to the administration’s efforts to repair ties with the Palestinians, a broader US agenda of reducing US involvement in the Middle East, and discomfort with embracing a diplomatic achievement so closely associated with Trump.
“The apathy with which the Biden administration has treated the coming anniversary of the Abraham Accords reflects a tin ear.”
Jonathan Ferziger
“The apathy with which the Biden administration has treated the coming anniversary of the Abraham Accords reflects a tin ear,” Ferziger wrote. “Letting Trump retain ownership of this breakthrough in Arab-Israeli peacemaking and not working aggressively to extend its reach is a mistake on which Republicans are sure to capitalize as they plot their return to the White House in three more years.”
Those words were written two years ago. Since then, the Biden administration has long since embraced the accords and “even” adopted the name Trump gave them. And now it is getting even more deeply involved by appointing Shapiro as a special Abraham Accords envoy.
As the old saying goes, “You can’t argue with success.” And with the US elections now just 16 months away, the Biden administration is clearly keen on mining one of the few recent successes in the region.
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