In recent years, security cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA)—sharing intelligence, coordinating the movement of forces, and protecting the safety of civilians—has been largely successful, primarily because of the shared desire to keep Hamas from taking over the West Bank. But lately Mahmoud Abbas has threatened to bring this arrangement to an end. Neri Zilber discusses the PA’s possible rationale, and the possible consequences:

In order to halt intelligence-sharing and coordination, an order would come down from Abbas to [PA security officers] saying: no more communication with your Israeli counterparts, no more dialogue regarding “shared interests.” Such silence from the Palestinian side would inevitably ring alarm bells in Israel, which is likely the point. The Palestinians’ hope would be that the Israeli security establishment [would] once again champion their cause in government deliberations.

On the ground, however, the Israeli army would respond quite differently. In all likelihood, Israel would feel the need to take more assertive action inside Palestinian-controlled territory in order to make up for the absence of PA security forces. . . . Increased raids would likely trigger not only a popular backlash among ordinary Palestinians, but direct friction between Israeli and Palestinian security forces (due to the lack of coordination). . . . [T]he potential for miscalculation on both sides would greatly increase.

For the Palestinian public, increased Israeli raids would necessitate a move . . . in which the people are allowed to “vent”—not at the PA, of course, but at Israel. With the PA riot police pulled from the streets of the West Bank, anything becomes possible: marches on checkpoints, marches on settlements, instability, escalation, chaos. The Israeli public would undoubtedly take notice, and realize how fragile the situation in the West Bank actually is.

For the Palestinian leadership, shattering the myth of a sustainable, indefinite status quo might be worth the gamble. It is not a coincidence that the Palestinian leadership, including Abbas, keeps linking security cooperation to the overall existence of the PA. “The end of security cooperation,” the Palestinian ambassador to Egypt recently observed, “equals the collapse of the PA.” He is almost certainly right. It might even be the plan.

While conventional wisdom in the Western press believes that the war with Hamas has left Jerusalem more isolated and scuttled chances of expanding the Abraham Accords, Gabriel Scheinmann points to a very different reality. He begins with Iran’s massive drone and missile attack on Israel last month, and the coalition that helped defend against it:

America’s Arab allies had, in various ways, provided intelligence and allowed U.S. and Israeli planes to operate in their airspace. Jordan, which has been vociferously attacking Israel’s conduct in Gaza for months, even publicly acknowledged that it shot down incoming Iranian projectiles. When the chips were down, the Arab coalition held and made clear where they stood in the broader Iranian war on Israel.

The successful batting away of the Iranian air assault also engendered awe in Israel’s air-defense capabilities, which have performed marvelously throughout the war. . . . Israel’s response to the Iranian night of missiles should give further courage to Saudi Arabia to codify its alignment. Israel . . . telegraphed clearly to Tehran that it could hit precise targets without its aircraft being endangered and that the threshold of a direct Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear or other sites had been breached.

The entire episode demonstrated that Israel can both hit Iranian sites and defend against an Iranian response. At a time when the United States is focused on de-escalation and restraint, Riyadh could see quite clearly that only Israel has both the capability and the will to deal with the Iranian threat.

It is impossible to know whether the renewed U.S.-Saudi-Israel negotiations will lead to a normalization deal in the immediate months ahead. . . . Regardless of the status of this deal, [however], or how difficult the war in Gaza may appear, America’s Arab allies have now become Israel’s.