The Abraham Accords, clinched in 2020 but now undermined by the war in Gaza, show how Trump might manage the Middle East crisis if voters return him to power.
The Abraham Accords, clinched in 2020 but now undermined by the war in Gaza, show how Trump might manage the Middle East crisis if voters return him to power
The Abraham Accords represented “one of the reasons” for the Oct. 7 attack, which “obstructed and complicated all strategies and agreements … that deny the freedom and dignity of the Palestinian people,” said Abbas Zaki, a member of the Central Committee of Fatah, the political faction that controls the Palestinian Authority. The attack, he added in an interview, “put the Palestinian issue back on the international agenda.
Brokered by Kushner, the Abraham Accords came about in secret, separate from established State Department procedures and instead enabled by affluent associates of the president and his family. Trump himself had little involvement in the discussions and at times seemed unenthusiastic about the breakthrough because it fell short of his aspirations for Middle East peace, according to former American officials.
“I think the Abraham Accords were incredibly important, but this disaster that we’re living through is a reminder that you cannot secure Israel simply through diplomatic work with Sunni nation-states,” said Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a Democratic member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
During these discussions, Trump conceptualized barriers to peace as a series of “stumbling blocks,” the former aide said. Among them was the status of the U.S. Embassy in Israel, which Sheldon Adelson, the late casino magnate and Republican megadonor, wanted him to move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Kushner’s networks reached beyond Israel. New York investor Rick Gerson, a Kushner friend who vacationed with the Emirati ruling family, introduced him during the transition to the Emirati leader Mohamed bin Zayed and his national security adviser, according to a person familiar with the matter, who said Gerson is not a Trump supporter.
The first was a row in July 2017 over Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque. The mosque is part of the site known as the Noble Sanctuary to Muslims and as the Temple Mount to Jews, and it’s a perennial flash point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
One former senior official, assessing why the White House was comfortable bypassing the Palestinians in brokering the Abraham Accords, said, “Moving the embassy was the dry run.”for the first-ever visit by a pontiff to the Arabian Peninsula — were making their interests clearer to Trump’s White House. When Robert C.
When the proposal was briefed to Mohammed, the powerful crown prince remarked that it “looked like the work of a hundred McKinsey consultants,” according to Kushner’s memoir. The Palestinian Authority boycotted the conference.by much of the world while envisioning a disjointed Palestinian state under conditions that the Palestinian Authority instantly rejected.
At the end of June, Kushner’s top aide, Avi Berkowitz, who held the title of special representative for international negotiations, joined Friedman for a trio of meetings with Netanyahu, who had a large plexiglass barrier in his office to guard against the coronavirus, former officials said.
Saban had an independent relationship with Kushner, forged, ironically, during the 2016 campaign, when Saban helped raise millions of dollars for Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential bid. During that election cycle, someone at Saban’s foundation discovered an old letter from Kushner praising the businessman’s philanthropic work. Saban proposed a meeting. He recalled telling Kushner: “You’re Trump, I’m Hillary. Let’s talk.
Otherwise, said one former official involved in brokering the accords, “Not one State Department diplomat was involved.” Miguel Correa, a two-star general serving on Trump’s National Security Council, proposed a name for the normalization agreement that morning, according to former officials. Correa, whose close ties to Emirati leaders had made him an important interlocutor during the negotiations, suggested the name Abraham, after the patriarch of Judaism, Islam and Christianity.
The participation of the three other Abraham Accords countries fell into place quickly. Bahrain’s finance minister called the White House that day asking to be next. An agreement was concluded within a month. Reputational worries had receded in the minds of gulf leaders, according to former American officials. “It was obvious to us going all over the region that the State Department cared more about Palestinians than Arab leadership does,” said one former senior official.
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