According to numerous critics, many of whom have positions at prestigious think tanks and publications, the normalization agreements the Jewish state reached with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain constituted an abandonment of the Palestinians. Peter Berkowitz argues that, to the contrary, the Abraham Accords can help to improve the lot of the Palestinians, and to reduce the intensity of their conflict with Israel:

Such tendentious claims—which presuppose that the Israel-Palestinian conflict stands at the center of Middle East politics and that unless Palestinians’ maximal demands are met, the region must stand still—reflect the all-or-nothing stance that has for decades impeded Palestinian progress. Contrary to [the] assertion that Israel embraced the Abraham Accords to disguise its reign over Judea and Samaria, it was the Iran threat and commercial opportunities that impelled Bahrain and the UAE to break with the past and establish official diplomatic ties with Israel.

Notwithstanding Palestinian intransigence, signatories to the Abraham Accords should in the words of the Israeli commentator Micah Goodman, take steps to “shrink the Israel-Palestinian conflict.” They could start with building roads, bridges, and tunnels to connect directly the many noncontiguous parts of the West Bank largely under Palestinian Authority (PA) control—the areas designated A and B by the Oslo Accords. This enhanced transportation network, which would become part of the PA, would improve Palestinian mobility by reducing the need for Israeli checkpoints while maintaining Israeli security.

Other measures to shrink the conflict include providing more West Bank land for Palestinian building to accommodate population growth, enhancing the Allenby Bridge border crossing on the Jordan river to make it easier for Palestinians to reach Amman’s international airport and to travel abroad, promoting economic development throughout the West Bank, and enabling Palestinians to transport goods for international trade more efficiently to Israeli ports in Haifa and Ashdod.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”