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The House of Lords is scheduled to consider the following question for short debate on 14 September 2023:

Lord Polak (Conservative) to ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they will take to ensure the success of the Abraham Accords.

Lord Polak is a former director of Conservative Friends of Israel and now serves as the group’s honorary president. Lord Polak is also an officer of the all-party parliamentary group on the Abraham Accords, chaired by Dr Liam Fox (Conservative MP for North Somerset). Dr Fox is also chair of the UK Abraham Accords Group, which aims to “build and maintain bipartisan support within the UK political system for the Abraham Accords”.

1. What are the Abraham Accords?

The Abraham Accords comprise a declaration and a series of agreements to normalise diplomatic relations reached between Israel and three Arab states: the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Morocco. A fourth Arab state, Sudan, has signed the declaration but has yet to sign a bilateral agreement with Israel. The accords represent the first normalisation of relations between Israel and Arab states since agreements between Israel and Jordan in 1994 and Israel and Egypt in 1979. Israel was reported to have agreed to suspend plans to annex territory in the West Bank as part of the accords, although Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu later said that this suspension was temporary and that longer term annexation was “still on the table”.

The declaration states that the signatories “recognize the importance of maintaining and strengthening peace in the Middle East and around the world based on mutual understanding and coexistence, as well as respect for human dignity and freedom, including religious freedom”. It continues:

We encourage efforts to promote interfaith and intercultural dialogue to advance a culture of peace among the three Abrahamic religions and all humanity.

We believe that the best way to address challenges is through cooperation and dialogue and that developing friendly relations among states advances the interests of lasting peace in the Middle East and around the world […]

In this spirit, we warmly welcome and are encouraged by the progress already made in establishing diplomatic relations between Israel and its neighbours in the region under the principles of the Abraham Accords. We are encouraged by the ongoing efforts to consolidate and expand such friendly relations based on shared interests and a shared commitment to a better future.

The accords were signed initially by representatives of Israel, the UAE and Bahrain on 15 September 2020 in Washington DC, following US-sponsored negotiations. In December 2020, Israel and Morocco agreed to re-establish diplomatic ties and reopen liaison offices in Tel Aviv and Rabat respectively. The following month Sudan signed the accord declaration and agreed to normalise ties with Israel, although negotiations on full normalisation continue. Both the UAE and Morocco have since also signed trade agreements with Israel. In March 2022, diplomats from the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco were among attendees at a post-accords summit held in the Negev region of Israel.

2. How were the accords received and what has happened since?

At the White House signing ceremony for the accords in September 2020, President Trump thanked the “great courage” of the leaders of Israel, the UAE and Bahrain and said the accords represented a “major stride toward a future in which people of all faiths and backgrounds live together in peace and prosperity”.

At the same ceremony, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the occasion as a “pivot of history” which would herald a “new dawn of peace”. He continued:

[…] the blessings of the peace we make today will be enormous. First, because this peace will eventually expand to include other Arab states, and ultimately it can end the Arab-Israeli conflict once and for all. Second, because the great economic benefits of our partnership will be felt throughout our region, and they will reach every one of our citizens. And third, because this is not only a peace between leaders, it’s a peace between peoples—Israelis, Emiratis and Bahrainis are already embracing one another. We are eager to invest in a future of partnership, prosperity and peace.

Representatives of the Palestinian Authority were less positive. Reacting to the accords in September 2020, the late Palestinian politician Saeb Erekat said “we definitely feel betrayed”. He added that, in his view and that of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the agreements represented “tremendous encouragement for the Israeli government to continue their occupation”. However, a poll conducted in July 2023 found that 47% of sampled Palestinian adults resident in Gaza and 63% in East Jerusalem expressed a positive view of the regional impact of the accords, although this fell to 27% in the West Bank. In addition, a majority of the just over 1,500 respondents in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem agreed with the statement “Arab governments are neglecting the Palestinians and starting to make friends with Israel, because they think the Palestinians should be more willing to compromise”.

Speaking in Tel Aviv on the second anniversary of the accords in September 2022, the Emirati foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, said the accords had led to a “thriving and dynamic relationship” between the UAE and Israel. He noted that the UAE had recently welcomed about half a million Israeli visitors, including tourists, students and entrepreneurs. Sheikh Abdullah added that the two countries “must continue building on this strong foundation to contribute to peace, stability, and prosperity in the region”, although he cautioned that the “stability of the region can only be fully realised by finding a solution to the Palestinian issue […] including establishing an independent state”.

However, more recently it was reported that in January 2023 the UAE had postponed a planned visit by Prime Minister Netanyahu and that ambassadors from the UAE and Bahrain had stayed away from an Israeli-hosted iftar dinner event held in April 2023. These perceived tensions have been attributed at least in part to Emirati and Bahraini unease at activity by members of the current Israeli government, including a visit to the Temple Mount, or al-Aqsa mosque compound, by Israeli national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir at the beginning of 2023. Following this visit, Oman, which had been expected to sign the Abraham Accords, criminalised any relations or interactions with Israel.

Oman has since opened its airspace to Israeli flights, and Saudi Arabia did the same in 2022. These steps came amid US efforts to encourage a rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, including plans for a normalisation of relations between the two states. However, Saudi Arabia has long stipulated that a Palestinian state would be a prerequisite for any deal. The Biden administration in the US has said that Israeli-Saudi normalisation is a US priority, although it has also said that further US efforts to assist normalisation between Israel and other countries in the region would “seek to preserve the viability of a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”. In June 2023, the US expressed concern at reported plans for further Israeli settlement activity. In a statement, the US Department of State said:

The United States is deeply troubled by the Israeli government’s reported decision to advance planning for over 4,000 settlement units in the West Bank. We are similarly concerned by reports of changes to Israel’s system of settlement administration that expedite the planning and approvals of settlements. As has been longstanding policy, the United States opposes such unilateral actions that make a two-state solution more difficult to achieve and are an obstacle to peace.

3. UK government policy

In August 2020, Dominic Raab, then foreign secretary, welcomed the announcement of an agreement between Israel and the UAE on behalf of the UK government. He said:

This is an historic step which sees the normalisation of relations between two great friends of the UK. We welcome both the decision by the UAE to normalise relations with Israel, as well as the suspension of plans for annexation—a move the UK has opposed as it would have been counterproductive to securing peace in the region.

Ultimately, there is no substitute for direct talks between the Palestinians and Israel, which is the only way to a reach a two state solution and a lasting peace.

In March 2023, the UK and Israel agreed a ‘2030 roadmap for UK-Israel bilateral relations’. Regarding the accords, the document said:

The UK joins Israel in acknowledging the historic significance of the Abraham Accords, which have the potential to enable profound advancements for security, co-existence, prosperity and peace for the region and its peoples. The UK will work with Israel to both deepen and expand these developments, and build upon the progress of the historic Negev Summit, in March 2022, to explore opportunities for regional cooperation and development in coordination with the emerging regional architecture in both security and civilian spheres.

In July 2023, Lord Ahmad reiterated that the UK welcomed the Abraham Accords as a “historic milestone bringing us closer to the goal of shared prosperity and peace throughout the region”. He added:

The UK is working with regional partners to ensure the Abraham Accords are an enduring success, and we continue to encourage other countries who have not yet normalised their relations with Israel to do so. We continue to support efforts to ensure normalisation also delivers benefits for the Palestinians.

Lord Ahmad had earlier reiterated the government’s position that a “two-state solution offers the best prospects of achieving sustainable peace”. However, at the same time he said it was the government’s view that Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank was working “against progress on the two-state solution”. In July 2023, the government said such settlements were “illegal under international law, present an obstacle to peace, threaten the physical viability of a two-state solution and call into question Israel’s commitment to a two-state solution”.

Foreign Secretary James Cleverly had earlier issued a joint statement with his Australian and Canadian counterparts in which they said they were “deeply concerned” at Israeli approval of new settlement units in the West Bank and “changes to the settlement approval process instituted by the government of Israel on 18 June, which facilitate swifter approval of construction in settlements”. They described the continued expansion of Israeli settlements as an “obstacle to peace”, said such expansion “negatively impacts efforts to achieve a negotiated two-state solution” and called on the Israeli government to reverse the approval decisions. At the same time, the foreign ministers said they “unequivocally condemn all forms of terrorism and violence against civilians, including the terrorist attack on 20 June in Eli targeting Israeli civilians”. They also condemned the “reprehensible and ongoing settler violence targeting Palestinians”. Their statement concluded:

The cycle of violence in Israel and the West Bank must be broken.

Australia, Canada and the UK stand firmly with the Israeli and Palestinian people in their right to live in peace and security, with dignity, without fear and with their human rights fully respected. We continue to support a comprehensive, just, and lasting peace in the Middle East, including the creation of a Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel. This vision can only be achieved through direct negotiations between the parties.

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Cover image by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash.