Israel Affairs

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Israel in the Middle East 75 years on

Eyal Zisser

To cite this article: Eyal Zisser (2023) Israel in the Middle East 75 years on, Israel Affairs, 29:3,
459-472, DOI: 10.1080/13537121.2023.2206209
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ISRAEL AFFAIRS
2023, VOL. 29, NO. 3, 459–472
https://doi.org/10.1080/13537121.2023.2206209

Israel in the Middle East 75 years on

Eyal Zisser
Department of Middle Eastern and African History, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

ABSTRACT
Israel’s relations with the Arab world underwent dramatic changes during its
seventy-five years of existence – from hostility and enmity to peacemaking and
reconciliation. This development is the result of the strengthening of Israel’s
regional and international position on the one hand, and the weakening of the
Arab world and the Arab states’ withdrawal into themselves in the face of the
socioeconomic problems confronting them, on the other. And while the regio­
nal fear of Iran’s hegemonic drive has played an important role in the evolution
of Israeli-Arab cooperation, the potential for consolidation of the nascent
relationship goes well beyond the Iranian threat as both sides share weighty
political, security and economic interests such as fighting radical Islam, promot­
ing regional stability and security, and ensuring economic prosperity. Yet while
the Palestinian issue didn’t prevent the consolidation of Arab-Israeli relations, it
remains the lowest common denominator for Arab public opinion in its search
for identity and meaning. As such, it will continue to threaten regional stability
and the building of Israel’s relations with its Arab partners.

KEYWORDS Israel; Arab-Israeli conflict; Palestinians; Egypt; Jordan; UAE; Bahrain; Sudan; Morocco;
United States; Saudi Arabia peace agreements; Abraham Accords

On 15 September 2020, in a festive ceremony on the White House lawn, Israeli

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the foreign ministers of the United
Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain signed peace and normalisation agreements
between Israel and the two states, which came to be known as the Abraham
Accords.1 A few weeks later, Morocco and Sudan joined the accords.
The Abraham Accords expressed a surprising turn, as much as
a breakthrough, in Israel’s relations with the Arab world. In contrast to the
received wisdom that as long as there was no progress on the Palestinian
question, Israel’s relations with Jordan and Egypt, with which it had signed
peace agreements, would remain cold, and its clandestine dialogue and
cooperation with several Gulf states would not come to the open, let alone
culminate in warm peace agreements.2 Moreover, unlike the Egyptian and

CONTACT Eyal Zisser [email protected] Department of Middle Eastern and African History,
Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
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distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered,
transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the
Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
460 E. ZISSER

Jordanian peace agreements, the Abraham Accords represented the will­

ingness and even the desire of the Arab signatories to establish warm peace
and normalisation with Israel and to promote cooperation with it from
a point of view that sees friendship with Israel and partnership with it as
a goal in itself: This in recognition of its regional and international status,
especially its military and economic prowess, in contrast to the past where
Arab rulers viewed settlement with Israel as a means for regaining lost
territories and winning US political and financial support.
This illustrates the sea change in Israel’s relations with the Arab world
over its 75 years of existence: from hostility and war to reconciliation and
peacemaking based on strength at home and abroad. Indeed, in its early
years, Israel perceived itself as a ‘soft seedling’, a weak state lacking geo­
graphic or demographic depth, under constant existential threat from its
Arab neighbours. ‘Poor Samson’ was how PM Levi Eshkol called it in the
1960s, alluding to its military strength that had been proven in every round
of hostilities since 1948 but at the same time to its weaknesses and limita­
tions, above all to the deeply etched existential fear of its Jewish population.
Seventy-five years after its establishment, Israel has become a ‘seedling on
streams of water’ enjoying widespread recognition and legitimacy even
among many Arab states with which peaceful relations and even normal­
isation have been established.3

From conflict to grudging acquiescence

Israel’s relations with the Arab world in its first decades of existence were
marked by a bloody conflict that originated in the struggle for Palestine
between Arabs and Jews in the twilight years of Ottoman rule, intensified
during the British Mandate (1920–48), and culminated in the 1948 war that
ended in a double Arab defeat: defeat of the Palestinian Arabs, many of
whom became refugees in the neighbouring Arab states and the Arab-
occupied parts of former Mandatory Palestine (i.e. the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip), and the defeat of Arab states that sent their armies to destroy the
nascent Jewish state at birth.4
Israel’s war success was due to its military resourcefulness, as well as the
cohesion and unity of purpose of its population and the boldness and
political sophistication demonstrated by the Zionist movement in the inter­
national arena. But these battlefield victories of the newly born state did not
win it legitimacy and recognition, let alone acceptance, of its Arab neigh­
bours. And so, Israel and the Arab states were condemned to repeated
rounds of violence, notably the 1956 Sinai war that brought Israel a decade
of quiet along its border with Egypt, and the June 1967 Six Day War, in
which Israel defeated the combined forces of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan (as
well as an Iraqi expeditionary force) and captured vast territories several
 ISRAEL AFFAIRS 461

times its size: the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights.5
This was followed six years later by the October 1973 War in which Egypt
and Syria launched a joint surprise attack in an attempt to regain their lost
territories, only to be beaten back by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), albeit
with great difficulty and an exorbitant human cost.6 This paved the road for
a turning point in Arab-Israeli relations by convincing some Arab rulers that
the status quo of neither peace nor war, which in the 1950s and the 1960s
seemed to be the lesser evil, had outlived its usefulness and that the only way
to regain their lost territories passed through the political process. The first to
crack the wall of Arab enmity was Egyptian President Anwar Sadat who in
November 1977 arrived for a historic visit to Jerusalem and addressed the
Israeli parliament, the Knesset. A year-and-a-half later, on 26 March 1979,
Egypt and Israel signed a fully-fledged peace agreement.7
The cracking of the walls of hostility came against the backdrop of deep
processes of change that took place in the Middle East at the time. The death
of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in September 1970, and the
astounding defeat he suffered three years earlier, heralded the end of an era
marked by Egypt’s quest for pan-Arab hegemony, and as a result the decline
of Pan-Arabism itself as the leading concept supported by the Arab public.
Added to this was the sinking of many of the Arab states into socioeconomic
problems at home due to accelerated population growth and the attendant
burden that they could not withstand, which was exacerbated by the failure
to modernise their societies and governing institutions. These hardships
motivated each Arab country individually, and Egypt was the first among
them, to give priority to state interests at the expense of the pan-Arab interest
and thus contributed to the willingness to resolve its conflict with Israel.8
The Six Day War was also a turning point in the history of the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict as it led to the revival of the Palestinian question and its
recapture of a central place in the conflict between Israel and the Arab states.
Indeed, after the 1948 war the Palestinian question ceased to exist as an active
issue backed by a national movement fighting for sovereignty and indepen­
dence and became a refugee problem. The Palestinian issue was revived in the
early 1960s by a young Palestinian generation eager for change and revenge,
which sought to take its destiny into its own hands. The ‘Arab Cold War’
between Nasser and his Arab rivals contributed to the resurgence of this issue
as each party sought to harness the Palestinian cause to its cause.9 But the
significant turning point in the status of the Palestinian problem was brought
about by the Six Day War, during which Israel captured the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip thus gaining control of the majority of the Palestinians; this in turn
kindled the Palestinian demand – more forcefully than in the past – for the
right to self-determination and even an independent state.
Within Israel, the Six Day War led to the emergence of the ‘Greater Israel’
concept, advocating retention of the biblical parts of the Land of Israel that
462 E. ZISSER

came to be known as the West Bank and Gaza, which remained outside
Israel’s borders after the 1948 war. In a gradual process, accelerated by
Likud’s rise to power in May 1977, there was a shift in Israel’s approach,
the public and its leaders, to these territories with the concept of ‘Greater
Israel’ gaining increasing support and penetrating the heart of the Israeli
consensus.
But these were long-term processes whose consequences would be felt
only in the coming decades. In the meantime, the immediate results of the
1967 and 1973 wars led to disillusionment in both Israel and the Arab world.

The Middle East in the 1990s and beyond: a window of

opportunity for Israel?
The process of reconciliation with Israel started by Sadat in November 1977
was accelerated by the changes in the regional and international arenas,
notably Saddam Hussein’s defeat in the 1991 Gulf War and the collapse of
the Soviet Union at the end of that year. These led to the opening of what
then-US Secretary of State James Baker called a historic window of oppor­
tunity to bring an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict. In October 1991, the
Madrid peace conference was convened at the US administration’s initiative
and international auspices. It was followed by negotiations between Israel
and its Arab neighbours, including the Palestinians, which culminated in the
September 1993 PLO-Israel Oslo Accord and the October 1994 Israeli-
Jordanian peace treaty.10
Peace negotiations also began with Syria and lasted for nearly two dec­
ades. These knew ups and downs and ended up in a stalemate. It is interest­
ing however to note the words of Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq Shara upon
meeting Israeli Prime minister Ehud Barak in the White House in
December 1999. Shara declared that a peace agreement between the two
states would transform the Arab-Israeli conflict from an ‘existential conflict’
in which the opposing sides fight a war of annihilation against each other to
a ‘struggle over borders’ that can be settled around the negotiating table. He
added that ‘everyone knows that a peace agreement between Syria and Israel
and between Israel and Lebanon means for the region the end of the era of
wars and conflicts and the opening of a dialogue between civilizations, the
opening of an era in which there will be honorable competition (between
Israel and its Arab neighbors) in various fields – political, cultural, scientific
and economic’. Later, in February 2000, Shara further elaborated (in
a Damascus lecture) that the Arabs must recognise that Zionism had the
upper hand in the historic struggle waged against it by the Arab national
movement since the early 20th century, hence the attainment of a peace
agreement with Israel was an irrevocable necessity for ending the conflict
that the Arabs could no longer win.11
 ISRAEL AFFAIRS 463

But the hopes for a breakthrough in Israeli-Syrian negotiations were

shattered. The failure of the March 2000 Geneva summit between Syrian
President Hafez Assad and US President Bill Clinton, and Assad’s death
three months later, closed the door, at that time, on the chance of reaching an
agreement between Israel and Syria. A few months later, in September 2000,
PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat waged a wholesale war of terror against Israel
(euphemised as the ‘al-Aqsa Intifada’) that plunged Israelis and Palestinians
into their bloodiest confrontation since 1948.12
For a moment it seemed that the trend of Arab-Israeli reconciliation,
which seemed in the mid-1990s to have crossed the point of no return, was
halted. This was also evidenced by the strengthening of Hezbollah’s position
following the IDF’s unilateral withdrawal from its security zone in southern
Lebanon in May 2000 and the outbreak of the Second Lebanon War in the
summer of 2006. At the same time, in February 2007 Hamas violently ejected
the PLO-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) and took control of the Gaza
Strip – a year-and-a-half after Israel’s unilateral disengagement from the
area. The rise of these terror organisations reflected the strengthening of
radical forces in the Arab region that challenged the commitment of the Arab
states to the peace process with Israel.13
Yet, while collapse of the Oslo process as a result of the ‘al-Aqsa Intifada’
slowed down and even set back the relations between Israel and the Arab
states, the peace agreements between Israel and Egypt and Jordan survived
the challenge. At the same time, communication channels were kept open
between Israel and the Gulf states, which strove to get the Arab-Israeli peace
process back on track and even advance it.14 Thus, for example, in 2002
a Saudi-led Arab peace initiative was announced with a view to providing the
Palestinians with an Arab cover for painful compromises while offering
Israel normalisation in its relations with the entire Arab and Muslim worlds.
The Israeli government refrained from responding to the initiative, let alone
accepting it, because it included a demand for the establishment of
a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, as well as the implementation
of the Palestinian ‘right of return’ – the standard Arab euphemism for Israel’s
demographic subversion.15

The 21 century: the changing faces of the Middle East

Israel was not the only beneficiary of Arab decline in the late 20th century.
Turkey and Iran seemed keen to exploit this development to revive the path
of two empires – the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Empire under the
Safavid and Qajar dynasties – that ruled the Middle East in a struggle and
competition between them from the 16th century to the end of World War I.
Turkey witnessed the rise to power of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the charis­
matic leader of the Islamist AKP party. In contrast to previous Turkish
464 E. ZISSER

governments since the creation of the Turkish republic in the wake of WWI
by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Erdoğan saw the Arab and Muslim worlds as
a preferred sphere of action for Ankara rather than the European arena. He
tried to promote Turkey’s position in the Arab-Sunni world while taking
advantage of the seizure of power of Islamic parties, mostly associated with
the Muslim Brotherhoods, in many Arab states.16
For its part Iran exploited the changes that took place in the Middle East
to advance its quest for regional hegemony, or at the very least – the
establishment of a security zone extending from the Iranian highlands to
the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. These ambitions go back in time and
guided the Shah’s regime that preceded the establishment of the Islamic
Republic (1979), or indeed every dynasty that ruled Iran over the past
millennia.17

The ‘Arab Spring’ and its aftermath

In the winter of 2010, protests broke out in many Arab states and led to the
collapse of some regimes that had ruled them for decades. These protests,
which came to be known as the ‘Arab Spring’ revolutions, undermined
regional stability and seemed to pose a question mark on the validity of the
contemporary Arab system based on territorial states that had existed since
World War I. For a moment it seemed that the Arab world was following in
the footsteps of other parts of the world, such as Eastern Europe or Latin
America, where restless young people led a course of change and even
democratisation. But the hope for change was soon dashed with the liberal-
progressive wave led by young protesters replaced by an Islamic wave carried
by the Islamist forces in the region, mainly the Muslim Brotherhood move­
ments, though their success in holding power was partial and mainly
temporary.18
Tunisia and Egypt found themselves at the end of the day at the starting
point where they were on the eve of the upheavals with power returning to
the forces of the old order: the army, the state institutions, and the social and
political elites. In Egypt, the army regained power in the June 2013 coup
under the leadership of General Abdel Fattah Sisi and in Tunisia President
Qais Said dissolved parliament and took over power in early 2022. In Libya
and Yemen, on the other hand, the ‘Arab Spring’ led to the disintegration of
state institutions and the outbreak of bloody civil wars. In Syria, Bashar
Assad, who succeeded his father in 2000, survived the protests and the
attendant civil war thanks to massive Russian and Iranian military interven­
tion, yet the war exacted an exorbitant human toll (over 500,000 dead and
millions of displaced persons) and massive material devastation.19
In an effort to prevent Tehran’s military entrenchment in Syria, and
the use of Syrian territory for passing advanced weaponry (especially long
 ISRAEL AFFAIRS 465

range rockets and missiles) to its Hezbollah proxy in Lebanon, Israel

launched a sustained air campaign (dubbed ‘the campaign between the
wars’) while refraining for most of the time from taking responsibility for
its attacks. Within these framework, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) attacked
Shiite militias deployed in Syria (at times Hezbollah and Iranian forces)
and destroyed air defence systems, arms depots, as well as missiles and
UAVs that Tehran sought to deploy in the country. According to media
reports, the IAF attacked Lebanon-bound weapons convoys while they
were still in Iraqi, or even Iranian territory, while Mossad conducted
a sustained covert campaign on Iranian soil to slow down Tehran’s
dogged quest for nuclear weapons.20
Alongside its attempt to dominate Syria, Iran worked to tighten its control
over Iraq, which had collapsed in the wake of the 2003 US-led invasion and
the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime, as well as to entrench itself in
Yemen, where the Shiite Houthi insurgents sought Iranian help in the civil
war that erupted in the country. The determined Israeli struggle against Iran
was seen by the Gulf monarchies as a successful example of how to deal with
Tehran’s threatening shadow, especially in view of the American reluctance
to confront Iran despite its implication in devastating attacks on oil facilities
and infrastructure in some Gulf monarchies over the past several years.21
Concern about Tehran’s growing power thus contributed to the intensi­
fication of the covert security and political contacts between Israel and some
Gulf states, mainly Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Established in the 1990s when
quiet channels of communication were opened, these contacts gained
momentum in the 2010s to include intelligence sharing and the selling of
Israeli military equipment and weapon systems to the Gulf monarchies.
These security and intelligence ties were accompanied by covert political
cooperation. Thus, for example, Jerusalem tried to help Riyadh vis-à-vis
Washington following the Adnan Khashoggi affair, which implicated
Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman in the journalist’s murder. For their
part, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states backed President Trump’s ‘Deal of the
Century’ for Israeli-Palestinian peace and even pressured the PA to soften its
positions and agree to negotiate the deal.22
This alliance of interests was largely reminiscent of the ‘periphery alliance’
that Israel sought to establish in the late 1950s with the non-Arab states of the
Middle East and the Horn of Africa – Ethiopia, Turkey and Iran – in the face
of the rising power of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. But this time
the union of forces was directed against the threatening shadow of Iran and
the wave of radical Islamic terrorism that had arisen in the Arab region.
Indeed, the rise of Islamic Sunni terrorism has also led to the intensification
of Israeli-Egyptian security collaboration, especially in the fight against ISIS
affiliates in the Sinai Peninsula, and with Jordan in view of Amman’s fear of
the spillover of the Syrian war to its territory.23
466 E. ZISSER

Israel has also intensified its economic relations with its Arab neighbours
thanks to the discovery of substantial gas deposits in its territorial waters in
the Mediterranean. As a result, Israel became a supplier of gas to Egypt and
Jordan (which has also acquired increased water quotas from Israel).
Jerusalem’s efforts to leverage the gas discoveries to advance relations with
Turkey did not go well at first, but in 2022 the two states decided to normal­
ise their relations and get them back on track. At the same time, Israel was
able to use the Greek-Cypriot connection as a possible channel for exporting
gas to Europe. Established in the shadow of the mutual fear of Turkish
expansionism, the Israeli-Greek-Cypriot strategic alliance was joined by
Egypt, whose relations with Ankara soured over the latter’s indignation
with the toppling of the Muslim Brotherhood government and the organisa­
tion’s subsequent outlawing. In September 2021, the Regional Gas Forum
was established in Cairo by seven Mediterranean states: Egypt, Israel, Greece,
Cyprus, Jordan, Italy, France, and the Palestinian Authority.24
These developments took place against the backdrop of the Trump
administration’s unprecedented backing of Israel, as vividly illustrated by
its December 2017 recognition of Jerusalem as the Jewish state’s capital and
the March 2019 recognition of Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights. The
administration’s attempts to promote the Deal of the Century (announced in
January 2020) – predicated as it was on recognition of the legitimacy of some
of the Israeli localities in the West Bank and their annexation to Israel – were
also seen as an expression of unequivocal support for Israel. Yet the catego­
rical Palestinian rejection of the deal, despite its advocacy of the establish­
ment of a Palestinian state and its endorsement by most Arab states, seemed
to have nipped the deal in the bud.25
The strengthening of Israel’s regional position enabled it to boost its
international standing, as illustrated inter alia by the intensification of
political and economic relations with Beijing and New Delhi, and the crea­
tion of a strategic dialogue with Moscow over the IAF’s operations, which
lasted until the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Even relations with
Europe improved due to the latter’s need for new energy and weapons
sources following the Ukraine invasion. Meanwhile, Israel continued to
cultivate its Greco-Cypriot alliance and promoted relations with outer-
circle states such as Romania and Bulgaria, with which it held joint military
training, as well as Azerbaijan, Ethiopia, and South Sudan.
These developments notwithstanding, the prevailing assumption was that
the Palestinian question remained a glass ceiling for Israel’s relations with the
Arab world, and that in the absence of progress on this front the Jewish
state’s covert security and political cooperation would not culminate in peace
agreements, let alone normalisation. Indeed, with Israelis losing trust in the
possibility of peace with the Palestinians as the Oslo process exacted far more
Israeli lives than previous decades of terrorism and led to the creation of an
 ISRAEL AFFAIRS 467

ineradicable Hamas terrorist entity in the Gaza Strip, the Netanyahu govern­
ments that ruled Israel in 2009–21 sought to preserve Israel’s control of those
West Bank territories that had not been surrendered to the PA and to prevent
the establishment of a Palestinian state. With Hamas and the PLO/PA
clinging to their longstanding rejection of Israel’s very existence (despite
the latter’s occasional pretences to the contrary), the two-state solution –
Israel and a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza living side by side in
peace – seemed to become an ever more remote possibility.

The Abraham Accords: a new beginning?

Those who expected Israeli-Arab relations to remain stalemated due to the
lack of progress on the Palestinian issue and the increased tension between
Jerusalem and Tehran, were to be disillusioned before long. On
15 September 2020, the Abraham Accords for peace and normalisation
between Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain were signed on the White House
lawn. Several weeks later, Morocco and Sudan joined the agreements and
established diplomatic relations with Israel.26
The Trump administration played an important role in promoting the
agreements and there were those in Washington who claimed that the
president was motivated by domestic considerations, namely the desire to
rally Jewish voters to his side as well as to help Netanyahu in the Israeli
elections campaign. After all, the Gulf states needed U.S. protection against
Iran, while the Sudanese regime needed Washington’s help and support and
Morocco obtained American recognition of its annexation of Western
Sahara.27
Washington also contributed to the deepening security cooperation
between Israel and many Arab states by moving Israel from the European
command (EUCOM) to the command responsible for the Middle East
(CENTCOM), and by initiating and encouraging joint air and naval exercises
with the participation of Israeli and Arab air forces. In June 2022, a meeting
of Arab chiefs of staff, including the Saudi chief of staff, was held in Sharm al-
Sheikh with the participation of the Israeli chief of staff. Dealing with
improving the ability to warn and defend against aerial threats, especially
missiles and drones, the meeting was linked by the media to the trump
administration’s desire to establish a Middle Eastern NATO.28
But the main significance of the Abraham Accords lies in the fact that
they were more motivated by the desire for peace with Israel than with
the wish to please Washington. The desire to deepen ties with Israel was
rooted in these states’ recognition that the Jewish state had become
a regional power – politically, economically and militarily – and that
promoting relations with it was in the interest of any Arab state seeking
stability and security. The Gulf monarchies were also convinced that
468 E. ZISSER

Israel was a reliable ally, especially in view of Washington’s declared

intention to divert its strategic attention from the Middle East to other
parts of the world, primarily the Far East. This was, of course, before the
outbreak of the Ukraine war that focused US and European attention on
Europe.
Moreover, while the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan were turn­
ing points in Arab-Israeli relations, they have not led to popular acceptance
of, let alone sympathy for Israel. In contrast, the signatories to the Abraham
Accords were ready to promote economic ties and even fully-fledged nor­
malisation with Israel, including people-to-people ties through the promo­
tion of tourism, trade, and cultural ties, among others, something the
Egyptian and Jordanian peace agreements have never done. As such, the
Abraham Accords contributed to the creation of a positive atmosphere
between Israel and its Arab neighbours and to the promotion of regional
cooperation in the fields of security and economy, such as a regional effort to
promote the production and export of gas from the gas fields in the eastern
Mediterranean. Indeed, in August 2022 Turkey and Israel agreed to normal­
ise and improve their relations, allowing Ankara to play an important role in
future regional cooperation. Such an atmosphere made it easier for Israel and
Lebanon to sign, albeit not directly, an agreement on their maritime border
that allowed them to promote the exploitation of gas fields located near the
common border.29

Conclusion
Israel’s relations with the Arab world underwent dramatic changes during its
seventy-five years of existence – from hostility and enmity to peacemaking
and reconciliation. This development is the result of the strengthening of
Israel’s regional and international position on the one hand, and the weak­
ening of the Arab world and the Arab states’ withdrawal into themselves in
the face of the socioeconomic problems confronting them, on the other. And
while the regional fear of Iran’s hegemonic drive has played an important
role in the evolution of Israeli-Arab cooperation, the potential for consolida­
tion of the nascent relationship goes well beyond the Iranian threat as both
sides share weighty political, security and economic interests such as fighting
radical Islam, promoting regional stability and security, and ensuring eco­
nomic prosperity.
Yet while the Palestinian issue didn’t prevent the consolidation of
Arab-Israeli relations, it remains the lowest common denominator for
Arab public opinion in its search for identity and meaning. After all,
recognition of the importance of ties with Israel has until now evolved
only among the ruling Arab elites while the ‘Arab street’ still nurtures
hatred and hostility towards the Jewish state. And so, in the absence of
 ISRAEL AFFAIRS 469

a visible chance for Israeli-Palestinian peace, the Palestinian issue will

continue to threaten regional stability and the building of Israel’s relations
with its Arab partners.30
Above all, since the Middle East is but a mirage of booming towers on
shifting sands, only the future will tell whether the establishment of peace
and normalisation between Israel and the Arabs is an irreversible process
that has crossed the point of no return, or whether social and political
instability in the Arab states, renewed flare-up of the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict, or a violent confrontation between Israel and Iran (and its terrorist
proxies Hezbollah and Hamas) will impose themselves on the regional
agenda, challenge Israel, and destroy the peace architecture it as laboriously
cultivated.

Notes
1. The White House, “Abraham Accords Peace Agreement,” September 15, 2020.
www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/abraham-accords-peace-
agreement-treaty-of-peace-diplomatic-relations-and-fullnormalization-
between-the-united-arab-emirates-and-the-state-of-israel/.
2. See, for example, Miller and Zand, “Progress without Peace,” The Guardian,
May 16, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/16/the-real-
reason-the-israel-palestine-peace-process-always-fails.
3. Shain, The Israeli Century.
4. Morris, 1948; Karsh, Palestine Betrayed; and Rogan and Shlaim, The War for
Palestine.
5. Oren, Six Days of War; and Parker, The Six-Day War.
6. Parker, The October War.
7. Stein, Heroic Diplomacy.
8. Ajami, The Arab Predicament; and Susser, “The Decline of the Arabs.”
9. Kimmerling and Migdal, Palestinians; Shemesh, Arab Politics, Palestinian
Nationalism; and Sayigh, Armed Struggle.
10. Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy; Rabinovich, Waging Peace; and Ross, The
Missing Peace.
11. The Clinton Library, “Statements by President Clinton, Prime Minister Ehud
Barak and Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa,” September 15, 1999, https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A6t36ze9Wg; and al-Safir (Beirut), February 12,
2000.
12. Zisser, “The Israel-Syria Negotiations”; and Karsh, Arafat’s War.
13. Harel and Issacharoff, 34 Days; and Baconi, Hamas Contained.
14. Harel, The Seventh War.
15. Fuller, “The Saudi Peace Plan.”
16. Cagaptay, Erdoğan Empire.
17. Saikal, Iran Rising; and Weichert, The Shadow War.
18. Lynch, The Arab Uprising; Lynch, The Arab Uprisings Explained; and
Robinson and Morrow, “The Arab Spring at Ten Years.”
19. Harris, Quicksilver War; and Duclos, “Russia and Iran in Syria.”
20. Schanzer, “The Quiet War between Israel and Iran.”
470 E. ZISSER

21. Spyer, “Is It Iran’s Middle East now?”

22. Forbes, June 17, 2016 (Hebrew); and Jerusalem Post, December 18, 2018,
February 3, 2020.
23. Alpher, Periphery; Aljazeera, January 5, 2019; and Magid, “Israel and Jordan’s
Relationship.”
24. Cook, “How Israel and Turkey Benefit”; and Macaron, “The Eastern
Mediterranean Gas Forum.”
25. Abdelaziz, “Arab Reactions”; and Margalit, “Trump’s Legacy in Israel.”
26. Morocco and Israel signed the peace agreement in Rabat on 22 October 2020,
while Sudan signed (on 6 January 2021) with an American delegation
a document of accession to the Abraham Accords but hasn’t thus far signed
a peace agreement with Israel.
27. Newsweek, February 11, 2021, https://www.newsweek.com/we-must-honour-
abraham-accords-side-deals-uae-morocco-opinion-1568314; and Makovsky
and Kram, “Think Regionally.”
28. Jones and Guzansky, Fraternal Enemies; Vohra, “Could There Ever Be
a Middle East NATO?”; and Wall Street Journal, June 29, 2022, https://www.
wsj.com/articles/u-s-held-secret-meeting-with-israeli-arab-military-chiefs-to-
counter-iran-air-threat-11656235802.
29. France 24, March 3, 2022, https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220303-
saudi-crown-prince-says-israel-potential-ally.
30. Harb, “The Middle East Accords.”

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor
Eyal Zisser is the Vice Rector of Tel Aviv University and the holder of The Yona and
Dina Ettinger Chair in Contemporary History of the Middle East.

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