With the Israel-Hamas war stretching into its fourth week, the international focus is increasingly shifting to what will come the day after the shooting stops, and how the parties and the international community can move forward.
One almost certain casualty of the Hamas terrorist attack is the normalization process between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Indeed, October 7 seems to have sounded the death knell of the Abraham Accords, which were initially championed by the Trump administration and later embraced by the Biden administration. As originally conceived, Israeli and U.S. leaders believed an “outside-in” approach would allow Israel to normalize its relations with the Arab world while side-stepping the conflict with the Palestinians.
But an end to the initial conceit of the Abraham Accords does not mean an end to the essential role that the Abraham Accords partners can play in helping broker an Israeli-Palestinian agreement.
The Abraham Accords partners can serve as an essential bridge between Israelis and Palestinians. While all of the Arab partners — the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco — have been critical of Israeli military operations in Gaza and of the high number of innocent Palestinian casualties, reflecting intense popular anger in their own countries, none has taken irreversible steps to sever ties with Israel or take other substantial measures against Israel. Saudi Arabia, as well, has indicated that it has not abandoned hope for reaching an agreement on normalizing ties with Israel.
Underlining these nations’ position, undoubtedly, is a view they share with Israel: that Hamas, with its Iranian backers, is a significant threat to their interests and the region at large. They recognize as well that ties to Israel enhance both their own security and economic development.
At the same time, the Arab states have strengthened their ties to the Palestinians, pushing back on the notion that the future of the Palestinian movement is of waning interest to the broader region. Speaking to the Guardian, on October 29, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh stressed that Saudi Arabia had demanded that any normalization agreement with Israel produce substantive benefits for the Palestinians. The Abraham Accords partners “are talking to us,” Shtayyeh said, “and we and they want to engage.”
Critically, the latest violence has reemphasized the need to find a political solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict in its entirety. There is no solution to the Gaza problem alone. There is only a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
In recent days, American rhetoric has shifted to acknowledge that reality. President Biden alluded to it in comments to reporters when he asserted “when this crisis is over, there has to be a vision of what comes next, and in our view it has to be a two-state solution.”
A potential way forward that is gaining currency in capitals around the world is to organize an international conference to relaunch the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. One potential model for what comes next could be the multinational Madrid Conference, organized in October 1991 following the first Gulf War. While the main focus of Madrid was to promote peace between Israel and its neighbors, including the Palestinians, there was also a broader effort to engage the region in measures to address critical challenges, including water, environment, arms control, refugees and economic development. Indeed, that broader effort produced real results and succeeded in advancing intraregional cooperation, including Arab-Israeli cooperation, on several core crosscutting issues.
This is where the Arab partners in the Abraham Accords can play a critical role. A framework already exists that could replicate the multinational Madrid talks: the Negev Forum, which was launched by the Abraham Accords partners and the U.S. along with Egypt in March 2022. Like the Madrid conference, the Negev Forum partners organized working groups to encourage cooperation, advance common interests and promote regional stability and prosperity in the Middle East. The groups focused on energy, health, tourism, food and water. Moreover, the partners identified strengthening the Palestinian economy and improving the quality of life for Palestinians as an explicit objective for the groups.
At the moment, of course, a political resolution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains on the distant horizon. Once military operations end, Israelis and Palestinians alike, traumatized by the horrific events of the past weeks, will need time to heal and repair the damage done. This certainly means an urgent effort to help Palestinian civilians in Gaza rebuild their lives, ensure access to essential humanitarian supplies and restore critical services, including health and education. It also means locating and recovering the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas on October 7. There will also need to be accounting for the leadership failures in both Jerusalem and Ramallah.
Most importantly, however, advancing efforts to reach a peaceful resolution of the conflict requires that both sides bring forward new leadership willing and able to make the concessions and compromises necessary to reach a permanent settlement. This will take time. But there is no need to wait for the shooting to stop to begin the process.
The Biden administration should announce now that they are preparing invitations to launch a new initiative. The broader international community, especially the UN, the EU, and the UK, should be invited to come to Washington, meet and begin preparations for negotiations. And the participation of those Arab states that have demonstrated their own commitment to living at peace with Israel as well as their support for Palestinian aspirations to self-determination is essential. In that way, Israelis and Palestinian alike can see that the horrors of October 2023 can be overcome and that the door to a more hopeful, peaceful future now and for the generations to come can be opened.
Amb. Gerald Feierstein is the Middle East Institute’s program director on Arabian Peninsula Affairs and former U.S. State Department Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs.