Author: Zaal Margvelashvili, Research Fellow at the Levan Mikeladze Diplomatic Training and Research Institute of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia

September 2020

On 15 September, U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu together with Minister of Foreign Affairs of the United Arab Emirates Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Bahrein Abdullatif bin Rashid Alzayani marked the signing of peace agreements between Israel and two Arab states: Abraham Accords Peace Agreement: Treaty of Peace, Diplomatic Relations and Full Normalization Between the United Arab Emirates and the State of Israel and Declaration of Peace Agreement between the State of Israel and the Kingdom of Bahrain.
President Trump said that the signing of the Accords set history on a new course. Any thought of such agreement was simply unthinkable earlier, given that the Arab world supporting Palestinians in the Israeli-Palestine conflict was adamantly opposed to any peace deal with Israel, prior to resolution of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict.
Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty of 26 March 1979 marking the end of the war, which had been ongoing since 1948 and Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty of 1994 addressing land and water disputes were an exception. The latter Treaty included a pledge that Jordan would not allow its territory to become a staging ground for military strikes by a third country.1
Neither the Emirates nor Bahrain was in a state of war with Israel. Therefore, the accords they signed with Israel are not peace deals in the same sense that the 1979 Treaty with Israel and the 1994 Treaty with Jordan are. However, the agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates/Bahrain can change the course of history and facilitate recognition of Israel by the Arab world, contrary to Iran’s interests. This is President Trump’s foreign policy victory.