Expanding the Abraham Accords in the Next Phase: Trump's Big Goal

In the latter half of 2020, the former Trump administration reached an agreement with several Arab countries for a series of agreements to normalize relations with Israel—the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan. These agreements became the first true normalization agreements between Arabs and Israel in the 21st century. The Americans called them the "Abraham Accords," based on their belief that Arabs and Jews share a common ancestor, Abraham, to whom the three monotheistic religions are attributed. On August 13, 2020, it was announced that the UAE and Israel had reached an agreement to fully normalize relations, including numerous agreements in the economic, technological, security, medical, energy, trade, industry, tourism, and other fields. On September 11, 2020, a month later, another normalization agreement was announced between Israel and Bahrain, which joined the Abraham Accords. The agreement was signed on September 15, 2020, at the White House in the presence of President Trump. The agreement stipulated the full normalization of diplomatic relations between the signatory parties and the adoption of necessary measures to prevent the use of either country's territory to target the other. On October 23, 2020, the White House announced that Sudan and Israel had also agreed to normalize relations, with Khartoum paying $335 million, as requested by Trump, in compensation to "victims of terrorism." On December 10, 2020, the United States announced that Morocco and Israel had reached another normalization agreement in exchange for Washington's recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, and Washington's agreement to supply Morocco with weapons and undertake major investments.

After all this, Trump left the White House due to the Republican Party's loss in the presidential elections. He did not complete the Abraham Accords, which Washington had worked tirelessly to reach a normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel. What hindered reaching an agreement was Saudi Arabia's insistence that Israel accept negotiations to end the conflict with the Palestinians based on the two-state solution and the 2002 Beirut Arab Peace Initiative, a move Israel was not prepared to accept at the time. The Biden administration did not cancel any of the agreements and adhered to them, although it did not make any additional efforts to complete the Abraham Accords and thus reach new normalization agreements between other Arab countries and Israel, such as Saudi Arabia, because it did not use central pressure on Israel to enable it to accept a resolution to the conflict with the Palestinians. During that period, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan made a great effort to reach this agreement. He visited Saudi Arabia more than once and met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. His most important meeting was in May 2023. Sullivan informed bin Salman that the United States believed there was a possibility of concluding a deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel before the end of the year. However, this did not happen, and it was likely expected to be reached before the end of 2023. Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein were sent to Israel to brief Netanyahu on the results of the discussions and Saudi Arabia’s demands, which were summarized in Israel’s recognition and engagement in a negotiation process with the Palestinians based on the two-state solution. This was something Israel was not prepared to accept. However, negotiations continued to achieve a normalization agreement, but the events of October 7 and the war on Gaza hindered any new agreement that would expand the Abraham Accords.

When Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, he began focusing on completing the Abraham Accords and working to reach an agreement that would include Saudi Arabia. Trump made no secret of this desire, which he has spoken of on more than one occasion. He expressed optimism that new Arab countries would join the agreement without labels, knowing that the ongoing war on Gaza and the displacement of Palestinians, which he discussed during his first meeting with Netanyahu in February 2025, would hinder any new agreements with any Arab, or even Islamic, African countries. Therefore, at the beginning of his White House tenure, he declared that he would work to end wars around the world. He chose Saudi Arabia as a negotiating platform between Ukraine and Russia, giving Saudi Arabia a unique leadership and diplomatic role in the Arab region as a prelude to a broader role that Saudi Arabia would accept for negotiations based on reaching a normalization agreement with Israel. During the meeting between Netanyahu and Trump on April 8 at the White House, Netanyahu failed to achieve any progress or score any positive points for Israel, particularly on the Iranian nuclear issue, taxes, the Turkish-Syrian file, and the Gaza file. What concerns us to clarify through this analytical article is Donald Trump's desire to end the war on Gaza and to lead negotiations with Hamas as a sole party, rather than as a mediator, with Qatar and Egypt as mediators. This would achieve an agreement to return the Israeli hostages in exchange for a final ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. This is despite the Israeli Defense Minister's talk of expanding the buffer zones in the Strip, the occupation forces' control over them, and turning the entire Rafah area into a buffer zone with Egypt. This is because Trump believes that ending the war on Gaza and exploring a genuine peace process that ends the conflict is the true gateway to any normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia. At the end of March 2025, the White House announced President Trump's intention to visit several Middle Eastern countries, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and several others. Of course, this visit will not succeed and will not achieve Trump's grand goal in the region unless the war on Gaza stops and the flow of humanitarian aid and fuel to the population there is resumed.

President Trump considers reaching a normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel the most important political achievement of his current administration, given the ongoing economic war. This achievement will restore security and stability to the Arab region and will also bring trillions of dollars to the US Treasury in the form of investments and other resources. It will also expand US influence in the region, easily serving American interests. All of this now hinges on an end to the war in Gaza and the acceptance of the Arab initiative adopted at the Arab Summit last March for the reconstruction of the Strip, which is the alternative plan to the displacement of Palestinians. I believe this plan has been accepted by the US and internationally, but arrangements are being sought to secure the necessary financial funding, in addition to discussions on the day after the war in Gaza and who will assume control of the Strip. The fear now in this file is that the conflict resolution file will be reduced to an entry point for American-Israeli-Saudi normalization by resolving the war on Gaza, stopping it, starting the implementation of the plan to rebuild the Gaza Strip, recovering the West Bank, and expanding the security powers of the Palestinian Authority within a plan to integrate the Palestinians into the Abraham Accords as an alternative to negotiations to resolve the conflict based on the two-state solution. However, despite this fear, the outcomes of the Arab Summit, individual meetings of American and international officials, the tripartite Egyptian-French-Jordanian summit, the meetings of Arab foreign ministers, and the statements of the meetings of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the African Union were all clear and focused on the condition of negotiating on the basis of the two-state solution and the Arab Peace Initiative to establish the Palestinian state in order to reach a comprehensive and just peace in the Arab region that removes all traces of tension and related conflicts.