The Abraham Accords and the Birth of Arab Zionism

While the detractors of Israel’s recent peace treaties with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have argued that they are purely “transactional” and that they somehow foster the abandonment of the Palestinians, Einat Wilf makes the case that the reality is very different. Drawing on numerous interactions with denizens of the Persian Gulf, especially young ones, as well as matters of public record, Wilf argues that the accords have opened the doors for Arabs to sympathize openly, and sometimes fervently, with Zionism. For the UAE in particular, they represent a maneuver in a “battle for the soul of Islam,” striking a blow for those who embrace tolerance over the fanatics. And by their very name—as well as by the way their signatories have put them into practice—the Abraham Accords suggest an acceptance of Jews and the Jewish state as part of the Middle East. And such acceptance, Wilf explains, can in turn make it possible for Palestinians themselves to make peace with Israel. (Video, 64 minutes.)

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More about: Abraham Accords, Israel-Arab relations, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, United Arab Emirates

 

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF