The Abraham Accords Have Outpaced the Most Optimistic Predictions

Since 2020, when four Arab states – the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan – joined the Abraham Accords and normalized ties with Israel, there have been major developments in the economic ties between the Jewish state and these Arab members of the Abraham Accords. Business deals, involving trade, technology, tourism, and agriculture have been signed. With the UAE alone – which has enthusiastically engaged with the Jewish state — Israel has signed deals worth $675 million. Israel’s Minister of Intelligence, Eli Cohen, has said that annual trade between Israel and the UAE is expected to reach $4 billion in three to five years. The UAE ‘s Minister of Trade, Abdulla Bin Touq, said that Abu Dhabi was projecting to grow economic ties with Tel Aviv to the tune of $1 trillion over the next decade.

The UAE has also been discussing buying weapons from Israel, now deciding between the Barak 8 or Spyder air defense missile systems, as well as the Iron Dome anti-missile defense systems. The UAE’s buying spree of weapons seems likely to end with the lion’s share of its purchases – save for the 80 Rafale fighters it has bought from France – coming from Israel.

Trade between Israel and Bahrain reached close to $280 million in 2021. Israel has so far been exporting diamonds and refined metals for chemicals to Bahrain and importing oil and aluminum from Bahrain.

In early February, Israel signed a security cooperation agreement with Bahrain, the first such agreement it has signed with a Gulf state. Israel has agreed to sell weapons to Bahrain.

Israel has also signed trade and tourism deals with Morocco. More than a million Israelis claim descent from Moroccan Jews, and many are eager to return as tourists. Bilateral trade between Israel and Morocco is growing quickly, especially in the agritech and health care sectors. From trade worth less than $30 million in 2020, according to Aviv Baruch, the chairman of the Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute, “the target now is to exceed over $1 billion in trade over the next three years.”

Morocco principally exports clothing and textiles, fruit, electric components and inorganic chemicals. Israel’s exports to Morocco center on agriculture, water technology, machinery, healthcare, and security. Israel has signed an agreement to sell drones and “advanced weapons” to Morocco.

Deals between Israel and Sudan, the fourth Arab member of the Abraham Accords, have so far been less impressive, limited to Israel sharing its knowhow in wastewater management, drip irrigation, desalination, and water production from the air. Future trade is likely to continue to focus on agriculture.

What all this means is that the Abraham Accords have outpaced the most optimistic predictions, and Israeli trade will continue to grow, and there will be more sales of Israeli weapons to the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco, as well as greater cooperation on intelligence with the UAE and Bahrain on Iran, and with Morocco on the Muslim Brotherhood.

As time passes, and the benefits of belonging to the Abraham Accords become ever more evident to other countries, one can expect more Arab and Muslim states to join. King Salman of Saudi Arabia is not in favor of joining the Accords, “as long as there is no Palestinian state,” but he is 86 and in poor health. Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, who will soon succeed him, has signaled that he looks with favor on Saudi Arabia’s adhesion to the Abraham Accords. Other likely candidates include Oman and the most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia.

Every year brings improvements in Israel’s defenses against terrorist attacks. Time in this, as in so much else, is on Israel’s side. Israel won all its wars, big and little, learned to defeat terrorist groups, and discovered how to locate and destroy the terror tunnels built by both Hezbollah and Hamas. Israel built a security fence separating Gaza from Israel. In December 2021, Israel announced the completion of the Gaza barrier. It is 40 miles long, and cost an estimated $1.11 billion to build. The barrier features a sensor-equipped underground wall to prevent terrorists from digging tunnels into Israel. It also has a nearly 20-foot high above-ground fence with remotely controlled weapons systems and an array of radar systems with cameras that cover the entire territory of the Gaza Strip. In addition, a barrier at sea has sensors to detect incursions from the water. It will be nearly impossible for terrorists to enter Israel from Gaza.

Similarly successful has been the security wall that Israel built between the Green Line – Israel’s pre-1967 border –and the West Bank. In 2002, there were 452 Israeli fatalities from terrorist attacks. Before the completion of the first continuous segment (July 2003) at the beginning of the Second Intifada, 73 Palestinian suicide bombings were carried out from the West Bank, killing 293 Israelis and injuring over 1,900. After the completion of the first continuous segment through the end of 2006, there were only 12 attacks based in the West Bank, killing 64 people and wounding 445. Terrorist attacks declined to 9 in 2010.

Israel, the Start-Up Nation that has never lost a war, has suffered assorted slings and arrows in one theatre of conflict – the kangaroo court of the United Nations.

In the U.N., Israel continues to be attacked in the General Assembly and, especially, in the U.N. Human Rights Council. At every session of the UNHRC, the group takes up the permanent Agenda Item #7, which is devoted to the “human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories.” More UNHRC resolutions have condemned Israel than have condemned the remaining 192 states put together. This past December, the General Assembly approved the establishment of an open-ended commission by the UNHRC to investigate Israeli “war crimes.”

While the UN can pass all the anti-Israel resolutions it wishes, they have had no practical effect on Israel’s wellbeing or determination to prevail over those who wish it ill. In the Middle East, at the very same time as these UN condemnations are passed, the Jewish state has broken out of its isolation, not only with the Abraham Accords, but in a warming of relations with both Egypt and Jordan, the two countries with which it has peace treaties but only a “cold peace.” It is no longer startling to read of Israeli ministers signing trade agreements in Abu Dhabi or Rabat, or meeting with counterparts in Manama or Khartoum. Israelis are pleased, but no longer surprised, that the history of the Holocaust will be taught in Emirati schools, or that Jewish history will now be taught in Moroccan schools. Meetings between Israeli ministers and their Arab counterparts are now a regular feature of Middle Eastern diplomacy. Israel is now being accepted. Time is in its favor.

The same oil producers who during the Yom Kippur War, by cutting production and issuing threats caused a quadrupling of oil prices, managed to use oil as a weapon to weaken foreign support for Israel, are now looking to Israel as their most effective ally in defeating a malign Iran, bent on establishing its hegemony in the Middle East. In the four campaigns Israel fought with Hamas in Gaza, and the three wars it fought in Lebanon – one against the PLO, and two against Hezbollah – Israel emerged the victor every time. The IDF also defeated the Palestinian terrorists who killed hundreds of Israeli civilians, as well as Israeli soldiers, during the five years (2000-2005) of the Second Intifada. Palestinian casualties outnumbered Israeli casualties three to one. The Palestinians were forced to sue for peace. Now the destruction of the terror tunnels from both Gaza and Lebanon, the completion of the security fence with Gaza and the security wall with the West Bank, and the extensive network of Arab informants whom the Shin Bet has enlisted, has brought terror attacks on Israelis to a historic low.

While votes against Israel at the UN annoy, they have had no real effect on Israel’s standing among the Western powers – the U.S., Canada, Australia, the U.K., Germany, and France – that count the most. Israel’s display of military prowess in the May war with Hamas reinforced respect for Israel, as did the performance of its Iron Dome anti-missile system, which intercepted 90% of the rockets Hamas hurled at Israel. Other countries have indicated their desire to buy this Israeli defensive marvel, that has proven itself in a real war.

They might want to wait. There is another defensive weapon that Israeli scientists have now come up with — a laser-based anti-missile system that is an astounding breakthrough. The laser-based interception, which is silent and invisible, is based on electric laser technology rather than the chemically based lasers used up to now. The cost is less than 10 shekels (about $3.50) per interception, in contrast with Iron Dome, which costs about 170,000 shekels ($49,000) per interception. This system will be operational later in 2022. Israeli innovations in weapons, offensive and defensive, keep being announced. And the world is impressed.

Israel also continues to amaze with its endless parade of high tech companies. Israel has more companies listed on Nasdaq than any foreign country except China. Israelis have more U.S. patents than any foreign country except Japan. The aggregate value of Israeli companies traded on Wall Street is more than $300 billion. It earns its title – “the Start-Up Nation” – every day. And Israeli entrepreneurs and inventors show no sign of slowing down. When it comes to innovation and market value, time is on Israel’s side.

And time is not on the side of the Palestinians. The Arabs of the four states that joined the Abraham Accords have demonstrated a willingness to pursue their own national interests and to ignore the demands of the Palestinians. Egypt and Jordan have yet to join them, but both countries have warmed up their previously “cold peace” with Israel. Egypt, In particular, does not hide its resentment of Palestinian ingratitude; the Egyptians, after all, fought in all three major wars against Israel – in 1948, 1967, and 1973 – and was defeated in all three, losing men, materiel, and money. Egypt has no intention of going to war with Israel again. Instead, Israel and Egypt are now collaborating on security in the Sinai, against regrouped fighters from various jihadi groups, including the Islamic State, and against the Muslim Brotherhood, to which Hamas belongs.

The other main historic threat to Israel has been Syria. But ten years of civil war have been catastrophic for Syria’s military. 200,000 Syrian soldiers have been killed. In 2011 Syria had 555 fixed-wing aircraft; now it has fewer than 200. More than 3,800 armored vehicles have been destroyed. Five million Syrians are internally displaced, and six million have fled the country. It will take $400 billion just to replace the infrastructure destroyed in the decade of war; Syria, meanwhile, is broke. It is hard to imagine it will ever again be a threat to Israel. The Golan, from which Syrian gunners used to rain down fire on Israeli farmers in the valley far below, has since 1981 been annexed by Israel; now Prime Minister Bennett has announced his intention to quadruple, from 25,000 to 100,000, the number of Jews on the Golan, to secure Israel’s hold on the area. Time is on Israel’s side.

But time has most definitely not been on the side of the Arabs. The source of the enormous wealth some Arab states have accumulated is entirely the result of oil sales. But the entire world is now mobilized to decrease the use of fossil fuels – which of course means, along with coal and gas, oil. The signs of such a decrease are everywhere. There were 17 million electric vehicles on roads in 2021, double the number in 2020. By 2025, analysts predict 20% of all cars sold in the world will be electric vehicles. There are 92.7 million solar panels now installed all over the world, with tens of millions now being added every year. The cost of solar power has decreased by 80% since 2010. As a result of the enormous and unforeseen increase in the use of electric vehicles and solar power, demand for oil continues to inexorably sink.

British Petroleum analysts believe demand for oil will decline substantially through 2050, due to government climate policies such as carbon pricing. According to BP, global oil demand could fall from about 100 million barrels/day in 2020 to a range of 30-55 million barrels/day by 2050. Meanwhile renewable energy will rise rapidly. Looking ahead, oil consumption as low as 30 million barrels/day in 2050 would mean a 70% drop-off from 2020. The world could manage quite well at that point without buying a single barrel of Arab – or Iranian – oil. Time is…well, you know.

Time is definitely on Israel’s side, once that problem called Iran is dealt with. And it will be dealt with, by Israel, with others if possible, but if necessary, all alone — like Gary Cooper in High Noon. If Israel were a stock, it would be a permanent “Buy.”

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