IN a letter in July nominating President Donald Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel heaped praise on the diplomatic deals known as the Abraham Accords, establishing diplomatic relations between his country and three Arab states.
In his letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Netanyahu called the 2020 accords, brokered by Trump, “breakthroughs” that had “reshaped the Middle East,” making a “historic advance toward peace, security and regional stability.”
The Middle East did not appear to be aware of any such advance.
Even as Israeli officials met with Hamas and US representatives in Egypt this past week, the Israeli military continued its devastating bombing of the Gaza Strip.
July itself saw the Houthis in Yemen attacking two cargo ships in the Red Sea and a brutal civil war continued to rage in Sudan. Weeks before that, Israel and the United States were bombing Iran, which fired missiles in return. And Israeli forces remained on the ground in both Lebanon and Syria, in the aftermath of wars that ended just months ago. Then of course, on Sept 9, Israel conducted airstrikes on Qatar in what it described as an attack on Hamas leadership, who were by chance in the Gulf state for a Gaza ceasefire talk.
The site of an Israeli airstrike on Al-Baqa Cafe and Restaurant on the beachfront of Gaza City in June. Even as Israeli officials met with Hamas and US representatives in Egypt this past week, the Israeli military continued its devastating bombing of the Gaza Strip. — Saher Alghorra/The New York Times
During the nearly five years since the Abraham Accords were signed, Trump, Netanyahu and other US and Israeli officials have repeatedly referred to the agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Bahrain as a “peace deal.”
Scholars who study the region say that is merely a turn of phrase, belying the fact that there has never been a war – or any violence at all – between Israel and the UAE or Bahrain. Morocco has also largely stayed out of the Arab-Israeli conflicts, aside from sending a token force to the 1973 war, more than 50 years ago.
“It’s got nothing to do with peace,” Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, a research organisation, said of the accords.
“Peace was the way it was branded, and marketed. But that doesn’t mean that it makes any sense. This was not an agreement that ends the war.”
In effect, the deals bypassed the central conflict, between Israel and the Palestinians, declaring harmony between parties that were not fighting.
Since then, the very phrase “regional peace” has become an opaque and disputed term in the Middle East, said Abdulaziz Alghashian, a Saudi researcher and senior non-resident fellow at the Gulf International Forum.
“Who is involved in this ‘regional peace’?” he said he had found himself asking supporters of the Abraham Accords.
He said he realised that for some, it is a concept that relies on “a complete avoidance of the Palestinian issue.”
In a statement to The New York Times, the White House defended the legacy of the accords and said that the wars in the region had nothing to do with their efficacy.
“No amount of revisionist history or gaslighting from liberal activists and Democrat donors can undo President Trump’s historic and transformative Abraham Accords which brought peace to the Middle East,” the White House said.
“Only President Trump could have secured these peace deals, and he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for all the work he has done to end wars and conflicts that no other world leader has been able to do.”
Nothing to do with peace
US officials and lawmakers from both parties have presented the Abraham Accords as a game changer with the potential to transform the Middle East. The accords did allow for Israeli tourists and investors to pour into Dubai, the biggest city in the UAE, and technology and energy companies signed new deals.
(From left) Netanyahu, Trump, Bahrain’s foreign minister Abdullatif Al Zayani and UAE foreign minister Abdullah Zayed waving from the White House balcony after the Abraham Accords signing ceremony in 2020. — Filepic/Reuters
Israel and some of the Gulf countries had already engaged in quiet trade and security cooperation, under the table. The accords brought that into the open and allowed it to expand.
But that was not how the deals’ signatories had presented them.
“The blessings of the peace we make today will be enormous,” Netanyahu declared from a White House balcony when the accords were announced. “Ultimately it can end the Arab-Israeli conflict once and for all.”
Trump said at the same ceremony that the accords marked “the dawn of a new Middle East,” speaking of a future in which “people of all faiths and backgrounds live together in peace and prosperity.”
After the news cameras were turned off, peace and prosperity did not, of course, sweep through the Middle East.
Israel’s occupation of the West Bank has deepened, rather than eased, as Emirati officials had hoped when they signed the deal, and members of Netanyahu’s government want a long-term occupation of Gaza. The prospects for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, with Jerusalem as its capital, a goal of Arab leaders, appear dimmer than ever.
The Abraham Accords were premised on the notion of Arab-Israeli cooperation while skipping past the Palestinians, but “that was always a mistake, and it wasn’t such a shock when Gaza proved it was a mistake,” said Marc Lynch, a political science and international affairs professor at George Washington University. “Maybe it shocked some people – but it shouldn’t have.”
On Oct 7, 2023, Hamas, the Palestinian militia that led Gaza and received backing from Iran, led a fierce attack in Israel that killed more than 1,000 people. In retaliation, Israel began a sweeping bombardment of Gaza, followed by a ground invasion. Two million Palestinians there are facing famine, more than 67,000 have been killed in Israeli’s genocide in Gaza, and most of the enclave lies in ruins.
Saudi and other Arab officials have long been saying that the Palestinian issue was “explosive, and the region cannot move on without solving it,” Alghashian said. Before Oct 7, this was a “theoretical concern,” he said. Now, it is visceral.
Lebanon and Egypt are suffering dire economic crises. And in 2023, an entirely new war erupted in Sudan, setting off one of the world’s worst famines in decades.
The only potentially bright piece of conflict-related news in the Middle East recently is in Syria, where a civil war finally ended with rebels toppling Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. But their victory had nothing to do with the Abraham Accords and it remains unclear whether they will deliver either lasting peace and stability within the country, or peace with Israel.
The missing ‘prize’
US and Israeli officials have frequently stated their desires and expectations for other countries, most importantly Saudi Arabia, to sign the accords. So far, that has fallen flat. Sudan, often cited as a candidate to be the next Arab country to join, has not established diplomatic relations with Israel.
Years of overtures to persuade Saudi Arabia to join the accords have so far failed. The Biden administration took up that mantle fervently, pursuing a deal built on the US granting major benefits to the kingdom. It never came to fruition, and analysts say the war in Gaza has made it much less likely.
“Inside the Gulf, there’s no way it’s going to expand,” at least under the same framework as the Abraham Accords, Alghashian said. Especially in Saudi Arabia, that idea is “tainted” now, he said.
Still, that has not stopped officials in Washington from recently turning their conversations about Middle East policy back to the Abraham Accords.
Trump has often claimed he deserves the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize for not only the Abraham Accords but also for resolving another “eight conflicts” in the world, though many of his actions have run counter to the prize’s ideals.
And now he seems to have gained some success in his attempt in brokering peace for Gaza with his 20-point plan.
“I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for doing the Abraham Accords in the Middle East,” Trump had complained on social media, arguing that his efforts to forge peace have been under-recognised. But, he said, “if all goes well,” new countries will sign on, asserting that the development would “unify the Middle East for the first time in ‘The Ages!’”
On Friday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo brought the suspense to an end when it announced that Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025. — ©2025 The New York Times Company
This article was first published in The New York Times.
