Abraham Accords Normalization

# The Abraham Accords: Normalization and Its Discontents

The Agreements and Their Announcement

On August 13, 2020 CE (23 Dhul Hijja 1441 AH), the United States announced that the United Arab Emirates and Israel had agreed to normalize diplomatic relations — the first Gulf Arab state to do so, and the first Arab state since Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994). The agreement was brokered by the Trump administration and was named the "Abraham Accords" — invoking the patriarch Ibrahim (Abraham) ﷺ, revered by Jews, Christians, and Muslims, as a symbol of shared heritage.

On September 11-15, 2020 CE, the accords were signed in Washington, with Bahrain and Israel signing a separate normalization agreement on the same occasion. Subsequently, in October and December 2020, Sudan and Morocco signed normalization agreements under different formulations. The US concessions to achieve these agreements included removing Sudan from the list of state sponsors of terrorism and recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara.

The Abraham Accords were presented by the Trump administration and its proponents as a historic breakthrough for regional peace. Their critics — including the Palestinian Authority, most mainstream Islamic scholarly bodies, and large segments of Muslim public opinion worldwide — argued that the accords abandoned the long-standing Arab consensus that normalization with Israel required a just resolution of the Palestinian question first, and that they strengthened Israel's hand against the Palestinians without extracting any meaningful Israeli concession.

The Pre-Accords Context: The Arab Peace Initiative

Understanding the Abraham Accords requires understanding what preceded them. The Arab Peace Initiative, adopted by the Arab League in Beirut in March 2002, offered Israel full normalization of relations with all Arab states in exchange for:

1. Full Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in 1967 (the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem)

2. A just and agreed solution to the Palestinian refugee problem based on UN Resolution 194

3. The establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital

This initiative — repeatedly reaffirmed by the Arab League — established the diplomatic framework that linked Arab normalization to Palestinian rights. It reflected a consensus among Arab states and Islamic organizations that the Palestinian question was a collective Islamic and Arab cause, not merely a bilateral Palestinian-Israeli matter.

The Abraham Accords explicitly broke from this framework. The UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco normalized relations without any of the Initiative's conditions being met, without Israeli withdrawal from occupied territories, and without Palestinian consent or participation. The accords secured one concrete concession from Israel: the Trump administration announced that Israel had agreed to "suspend" (not abandon) its plans to annex portions of the West Bank. Critics noted that this "suspension" was not formalized in any agreement and was subsequently disregarded.

The US Concessions and Their Significance

The US concessions made to secure the accords reveal the transactional nature of the process:

Sudan: The removal of Sudan from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism — a designation that had crippled Sudan's economy and international standing for decades — was a significant concession. Sudan had been seeking removal for years; the Trump administration leveraged this need to secure Sudan's participation in the accords. The timing was particularly fraught: Sudan was in the midst of a fragile democratic transition following the removal of Omar al-Bashir, and the normalization was negotiated with a transitional military-civilian government that lacked democratic legitimacy.

Morocco: The US recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara — a territory whose status has been disputed since Spain's 1975 withdrawal, with the Sahrawi indigenous population represented by the Polisario Front seeking self-determination — was a significant geopolitical concession. It reversed decades of US policy supporting the UN's position that Western Sahara's status should be determined by a referendum of the Sahrawi people. The exchange: Morocco's recognition of Israel.

The willingness to trade indigenous Sahrawi rights for Israeli normalization deals was widely noted as demonstrating that the accords prioritized US-Israeli strategic interests over the principle of self-determination — the same principle invoked by Palestinian advocates.

The Islamic Scholarly Response

The Islamic scholarly response to the Abraham Accords was largely critical, though with important distinctions.

Major Islamic scholarly bodies — including the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), al-Azhar, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — condemned the accords as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause and a violation of Islamic principles of solidarity. The IUMS under Yusuf al-Qaradawi was particularly forceful; al-Azhar described the accords as "a stab in the back of the Palestinian people."

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that did not sign the accords were noticeably quiet rather than openly critical — suggesting tacit sympathy with the strategic logic of the agreements without willingness to take the political costs of open endorsement. Saudi normalization, which the Trump and Biden administrations pursued, was not achieved before the October 2023 Gaza war disrupted the process.

The classical Islamic principle relevant to the accords is wala' wa-bara' in its political application: Muslims have a duty of solidarity (wala') to one another and should not take as allies those who are actively oppressing fellow Muslims. The specific application of this principle to state diplomacy is a matter of scholarly debate, but the broad consensus was that normalizing with an Israel that continued to occupy Palestinian land, maintain the Gaza blockade, and expand settlements was incompatible with Islamic obligations to the Palestinians.

The Palestinian Perspective

The Palestinian Authority rejected the Abraham Accords entirely, recalling its ambassadors from the UAE and Bahrain and condemning the normalization as a "betrayal." Palestinians across political factions — Fatah, Hamas, and independent voices — were unified in their opposition.

From the Palestinian perspective, the fundamental problem with the accords was structural: they gave Arab states (and their populations) commercial, diplomatic, and technological benefits from the Israeli relationship without the Palestinians receiving anything in return. The "suspension" of annexation announcements — the only concession nominally made in the Palestinians' interest — was widely understood to be temporary and was not matched by any substantive change in Israeli settlement activity or treatment of Palestinians.

The Palestinian fear was that the accords would reduce Arab and Muslim political pressure on Israel by separating the interests of Arab states from Palestinian rights — exactly what critics said happened. With multiple Arab states normalizing, the leverage of "no normalization without Palestinian rights" was eroded.

The October 7, 2023 Context

The trajectory of the Abraham Accords was fundamentally disrupted by the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas and the subsequent Israeli military campaign in Gaza. The scale of civilian deaths in Gaza — which multiple human rights organizations and UN bodies characterized as constituting war crimes and potentially genocide — made continued normalization politically untenable for Arab publics and complicated the diplomatic positions of states that had signed the accords.

Morocco and Sudan's normalizations, which had less strategic depth than the UAE's, came under particular political pressure. The Saudi normalization process, which had been advancing, was effectively paused.

The Gaza war demonstrated that the Palestinian question could not be bracketed from regional politics as the Abraham Accords framework appeared to assume. The underlying conflict remained explosive and its consequences uncontainable.

The Theological Principle: Justice Before Normalization

From an Ahl us-Sunnah perspective, the Abraham Accords raise a question about the relationship between realpolitik and Islamic obligation. Muslim states are permitted to have diplomatic relations, including with non-Muslim states, and Islamic international relations (siyar) does not prohibit treaties and agreements with non-Muslim political entities.

The specific problem with the Abraham Accords was not normalization per se — it was normalization that actively weakened the position of an oppressed Muslim people (the Palestinians) without securing any justice for them, in exchange for commercial and strategic benefits to the normalizing states. This represents a failure of the Islamic obligation of solidarity with the oppressed and the prohibition on contributing to oppression.

The Prophet ﷺ said: "Help your brother whether he is an oppressor or oppressed." The Companions asked: "We understand helping the oppressed, but how do we help the oppressor?" He ﷺ replied: "By restraining him from his oppression." (Bukhari)

The application of this principle to international relations is not simple. But it suggests that Muslim states' relationships with Israel must be conditioned on — not decoupled from — the requirements of justice for the Palestinian people.

Sources:

• Abraham Accords: Peace Agreement, Normalization of Relations and Full Diplomatic Relations (UAE-Israel). September 15, 2020.
• White House. The Abraham Accords. Washington DC: White House, 2020. (official documentation)
• Hanieh, Adam. "The Abraham Accords: The Counter-Revolution in the Middle East." Historical Materialism 29, no. 4 (2021).
• Abulof, Uriel. "The Abraham Accords in Context." Middle East Policy 28, no. 1 (2021).
• International Union of Muslim Scholars. Statement on the UAE-Israel Normalization Agreement. August 14, 2020.
• Al-Azhar al-Sharif. Statement on normalization agreements. September 2020.
• Palestinian Authority. Statement by President Mahmoud Abbas. August 13, 2020.
• B'Tselem — The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. Various reports on settlements and occupation, 2020-2024.