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When the U.S.-mediated Abraham Accords were signed in 2020, they represented more than just a handshake between Israel and a few Arab nations. The hope was that trade, security, and technology collaborations could thrive independently, without waiting for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be resolved first. The belief was that shared interests might achieve what many years of formal negotiations had not.
For a while, the bet looked like it was paying off. Embassies opened. Direct flights connected cities that had never had ties before. Israeli and Gulf companies started partnering on cybersecurity, solar power and other ventures. Trade climbed steadily. Across the region, the conversation seemed to be shifting away from crisis and toward opportunity.
Regional Politics
Then reality caught up with the theory. The Accords have outperformed a lot of early skepticism, but they have also exposed real weaknesses in how they were built. The Palestinian issue turned out not to be something you can set aside. The attacks of October 7, the war in Gaza, and the scale of civilian suffering that followed dragged Palestine back to the center of regional politics. This provided proof that lasting stability in the Middle East is not possible as long as the conflict remains unresolved.
None of that erases what the Accords actually achieved. The UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan each normalized relations with Israel through their own distinct paths, and the results have been real. There has been more trade, more tourism, deeper intelligence cooperation, and growing investment in renewable energy and technology.
Gulf governments increasingly see Iran, not Israel, as their primary threat, and their priorities have shifted toward economic diversification, food and water security, and energy transition. These are areas where Israel has real expertise to offer. For Washington, the Accords have been something close to a diplomatic win. They have been a way to expand influence through trade and partnership rather than costly military commitments.
What is most striking is how durable the Accords have proven to be. Even amid the intense anger over Gaza across the Arab world, not a single signatory walked away. Although cooperation slowed and diplomatic visits dried up, the underlying architecture of trade ties, security coordination and formal diplomatic relations held. That staying power says something real. These agreements rest on interests that run deeper than any one conflict.
But durability is not the same thing as legitimacy. The Accords were built on the premise that Arab-Israeli normalization could move forward while Palestinian statehood stayed unresolved. That thinking helped get things off the ground initially but has left the whole project standing on shaky footing.
Governments can justify normalization in the language of strategic interest. The public, more often than not, sees it differently. As images of destruction in Gaza spread across every screen in the region, a lot of Arab citizens do not experience normalization as a step toward regional peace. They experience it as their own governments looking away from the Palestinian cause. Diplomats can compartmentalize. Most people cannot. For them, questions of justice and solidarity are not separate from questions of strategy. They are the same question.
That is the paradox at the heart of the Accords. They survive because states have genuine interests in keeping them alive. But their future is uncertain because state interest, by itself, does not add up to public legitimacy. For normalization to last, people across the region need to see it as part of something fairer, not as a way of dodging a hard problem.
Saudi Arabia is where this tension shows up most clearly. Before October 2023, Saudi Arabia’s recognition of Israel was widely expected to be the move that would turn the Accords from a series of bilateral deals into a genuine regional realignment. That is still possible. It has just gotten a lot more complicated.
Saudi Arabia differs from the UAE or Bahrain. As the custodian of Islam’s two holiest sites and the most influential power in the Arab world, Riyadh cannot treat the Palestinian issue as a footnote the way smaller states have. Its domestic politics, its religious standing, its regional weight all demand that any opening to Israel be framed as advancing the Palestinian cause, not stepping around it.
Normalization with Saudi Arabia is still on the table, but the price has gone up. Any future deal will likely need firm commitments on Palestinian governance, reconstruction funding, security arrangements, and a credible path to statehood. Without that, a Saudi-Israeli agreement risks becoming little more than an elite handshake. One crisis in Gaza, Jerusalem, or the West Bank could tear it apart.
None of this makes the Abraham Accords a failure. If anything, they prove that Israel and Arab states can build practical, mutually beneficial partnerships even after years of conflict. That is a genuine and significant achievement. The cooperation built around water, energy, infrastructure, technology, and security is a tool this region badly needs, given the pressures of climate change, economic strain, and ongoing instability.
But the framework needs a rethink. Washington should stop treating normalization as a substitute for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and start using it as leverage to revive the peace process. Arab governments that have already normalized relations should tie further integration to concrete progress in Palestinian governance and civilian protection, rather than to vague statements of solidarity. And Israel needs to accept that regional acceptance will stay limited for as long as the Palestinian question remains open.
Regional Integration
The lesson here is not that normalization was a mistake. It is that normalization without political legitimacy is inherently fragile. Strategic interest can hold an agreement together through a crisis. It cannot, on its own, build a lasting regional order.
If the Abraham Accords are going to become a real foundation for peace, rather than a way of managing around the region’s hardest problem, Palestine cannot stay an afterthought. It has to be treated as the unresolved issue the Accords were always meant to address. Real regional integration means finally confronting the challenge that has defined this region all along.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed in this article/column are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of South Asian Herald.
