Will Current Peace Deal Lead to More Nations Joining Abraham Accords?

Over the past eight months, President Donald Trump and his administration have brokered eight peace deals with the last one being the Israel-Gaza peace deal. In addition, Trump was instrumental in bringing about the Abrahamic Accords, and he is now wanting to extend it to other nations. Virginia Allen at The Daily Signal wrote of the current situation as follows. 

“Trump told world leaders in Israel and Egypt” this week that that the “Middle East is facing an opportunity for peace.” According to Trump, the Abraham Accords is “One of the means” to achieve a peaceful future.

“It’s my firm hope and dream, frankly, that together, the Abraham Accords will turn out to be everything that we thought they would,” Trump said before the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, on Monday as he urged additional nations to join the accords.

After giving his address in Israel, Trump flew to Egypt, where he signed a document alongside leaders from Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey, pledging a commitment to a permanent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

Following the initial ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel last week and the weakening of the Iranian regime earlier this year, Trump says there is now “no excuses” for additional Muslim nations not to join the accords.

“We don’t have a Gaza, and we don’t have Iran as an excuse. That was a good excuse, but we don’t have that anymore,” Trump said to leaders of about two dozen nations at a “peace summit” in Egypt on Monday.

Jews, Christians, and Muslims all view Abraham as a significant figure in the history of their respective faiths, making Abraham an apt name for the agreement. The four Abraham Accords were brokered by the U.S. during the first Trump administration and normalized relations between Israel and Morocco, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Sudan, although the agreement with Sudan has been affected by the Sudanese civil war.

The accords aim to foster peace and normal trade relations between Israel and countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Numerous experts, such as David Aaronson (deputy director of the Abraham Accords Peace Institute) and Ilan Berman (senior vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council), believe that more countries will join the Abraham Accords in future years. This is something that is a high priority of both Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Azerbaijan is one, because of its already-close ties to Israel, its growing partnership with the U.S., and its increasingly anti-Iranian and anti-Russian foreign policy,” Berman said. Additionally, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia would be two important and significant additions to the Abraham Accords, he said, a sentiment echoed by Asher Fredman, the former director for Israel at the Abraham Accords Peace Institute and a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation.

Saudi Arabia and Indonesia are best described as the “two biggest prizes” to add to the accords, Fredman told The Daily Signal.

Allen quoted Fredman as stating that Saudi Arabia is considered to be the “leader of the Muslim world” and reminded her readers that the “two most holy Muslim cities, Mecca and Medina, are located in Saudi Arabia.” She also wrote that Indonesia would be a significant addition to the Abraham Accords because it “is the world’s most populous Muslim nation” as well as being “a rising power in Asia.”