Did normalization bring peace to the Middle East?

At the signing ceremony of the “Abraham Accords” at the White House on September 15, 2020, former US President Donald Trump said: “A lasting peace will come to the Middle East.” He continued optimistically: “After decades of division and conflict, we celebrate the dawn of a new Middle East.” He was filled with a missionary spirit when he said: “Today’s signing sets history on a new path.” This is the spirit that rallied – or so it appeared – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said that the Abraham Accords could ultimately “end the Arab-Israeli conflict once and for all.” This is the spirit that the then US Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, spoke of when he said: “In a matter of months or a year, the Arab-Israeli conflict will be over.”

What is the meaning? What was the purpose?

According to Israeli and American statements, it seemed clear that they wanted peace without a solution to the Palestinian issue, a peace that would go beyond that “intractable” issue, a peace through the gateway of normalization that would go beyond the Palestinians “who do not want peace,” beyond them to the wider Arab environment, and then the Arab-Israeli conflict would become, in its traditional form, a Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and then it would be reduced to an Israeli-Gazan conflict, or rather a conflict between a democratic state friendly to the Arabs and terrorist groups that threaten the common Israeli-Arab interests. And so were the theories.

The idea was that the Palestinians’ overcoming, or their feeling that time would overtake them, would hasten their joining the new Middle Eastern convoy that was then viewed as a convoy of peace, brotherhood, prosperity, flourishing, and a “new Middle East.”

Does this mean ignoring the Palestinian right?

This - according to the requirements of normalization - meant redefining the Palestinian right, reducing the issue to its humanitarian, economic, and legal dimensions, and ignoring the political aspect of this issue, which means going beyond the “two-state solution” to a set of economic and security arrangements that guarantee the Palestinians a decent life, without mentioning an independent state on their national soil, in accordance with international resolutions.

The basic idea behind the Arab-Israeli normalization agreements, called the “Abraham Accords,” was to enter the threshold of a new Middle East free of wars. Since the failure to resolve the Palestinian issue was—and still is—the cause of the many wars witnessed in the Middle East, the normalization agreements were viewed as potentially bringing peace to the Middle East, even without resolving the Palestinian issue, because the Middle East should not wait for peace to come until that thorny issue is resolved. Accordingly, according to the theorists of these agreements, the Palestinians will have to join the normalization agreements that lead to peace, otherwise they will be threatened with being bypassed and their cause bypassed.

Thus, quite simply, peace will be achieved in the Middle East by bypassing the solution to the Palestinian issue, and the circle of the “Abraham Accords” will expand with or without the Palestinians, as if the Palestinians are the only obstacle to peace, and therefore they and their issue must be bypassed if they do not accept normalization with Israel and its acceptance as a normal state in a Middle East that it leads, politically, security-wise, militarily and economically, a peaceful and prosperous Middle East, “in which wars will end forever,” with Donald Trump’s expectations at the time that “the Palestinians will eventually join,” otherwise they will be “left out in the cold,” or according to the description of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, who said that the Palestinians “will later realize their mistake and join the bandwagon,” and this, according to Michael Doran, “means bypassing the Palestinian issue,” given that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict “is likely to become, over time… an unsolvable dilemma.”

However, there were some “generous temptations” that the normalization agreements offered to the Palestinians at the time, represented in stopping the annexation of the West Bank lands, as Israel agreed to a “temporary halt” in order to give the opportunity to sign more of these agreements, on a long road in which Israel has its eye on the grand prize, by concluding a similar agreement with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. If it happens, according to Israeli and American estimates, it will be the biggest step towards permanent peace in the Middle East, and even the biggest step towards the transformation to the new Middle East, according to the Israeli-American vision, due to Saudi Arabia’s religious, economic, political and geographical weight, which can help push these agreements with the largest number of Arab countries.

The stated goal of normalization was to establish peace in the Middle East, and the requirements were that peace be achieved through normalization, not through the two-state solution, at least from the American and Israeli point of view, because the statements of Israeli and American officials regarding the Abraham Accords were clear that the Palestinians must seize the opportunity and join normalization, otherwise the caravan will pass, and time will pass them by.

Here, several fundamental questions arise: Has normalization achieved the goal of establishing peace in the Middle East? Can peace be established by opening embassies in Arab capitals, while ignoring Palestinian rights to an independent, sovereign state? Has the normalization train led to the desired pressure on the Palestinians to make them accept something less than their state, which was guaranteed by international resolutions? Have the Arab countries that normalized relations with Israel been able to influence the Israelis to extract any concessions from them in favor of Palestinian rights? Have they been able to exploit the relationship with Israel in favor of the two-state solution? Has Israel listened to those who advise it that its intransigence will lead to the explosion of the region? In short: Has normalization achieved its goals in establishing peace?

There is no doubt today that the normalization train starting in the way that Israel and the United States wanted did not lead to peace. On the contrary, it is not far from the truth to say that the Palestinians’ feeling that Israel is trying to bypass them into their Arab surroundings has accumulated feelings of anger and frustration. We are not far from the truth if we say that one of the reasons for the explosion of the current situation in Gaza is the attempts of Israel and the United States to normalize relations with the Arab countries, without regard for Palestinian rights, which made the Palestinians feel despair, which led - among other factors - to the explosion of the situation in Gaza and the region in an unprecedented manner.

The most important recipe for war is for one party to reach a state of complete frustration and despair, and this “war recipe” is what the philosophers of normalization have presented on the basis that it is a magic formula that can make the Palestinians desire peace, in order to catch up with the prosperity that normalization will bring to the new “Abrahamic” Middle East.

*Quoted from Al-Quds Al-Arabi