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President Donald J. Trump Has Secured a Historic Deal
REMARKS President Donald J. Trump Has Secured a Historic Deal FOREIGN POLICY Issued on: August 13, 2020 Our vision is one of peace, security, and prosperity—in this region, and in the world. Our goal is a coalition of nations who share the aim of stamping out extremism and providing our children a hopeful future that does honor to God. President Donald J. Trump SECURING A HISTORIC AGREEMENT: President Donald J. Trump has secured the first agreement to normalize relations between Israel and a major Arab country in decades. President Donald J. Trump has brokered an agreement to normalize relations between the United Arab Emirates and Israel – the first such agreement between Israel and a major Arab country since 1994. The countries have committed to the exchange of embassies and ambassadors, and to begin cooperation in a broad range of fields including education, healthcare, trade, and security. This historic breakthrough is the most significant step toward peace in the Middle East in over 25 years. The United Arab Emirates is the first major Arab state to recognize Israel since the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty was signed on October 26, 1994. SHAPING PEACE THROUGH BOLD LEADERSHIP: President Trump recognized it was time for a new approach to achieve peace, security, and opportunity for the people of the Middle East. This historic breakthrough was made possible by President Trump’s leadership and expertise as a dealmaker. The President built trust with our regional allies and reoriented their strategic calculus by identifying shared interests and common opportunities, moving them away from perpetuating old conflicts. This deal provides a foundation for further advances toward regional peace in the future. The United States believes that more Arab and Muslim countries will follow the United Arab Emirates’ lead and normalize relations with Israel. BUILDING A MORE PEACEFUL AND PROSPEROUS REGION: This agreement will help put the region on a truly transformative path: one with stability, security, and opportunity. This agreement is a major breakthrough for Muslims throughout the world who wish to come in peace to pray at the Al Aqsa Mosque, as they will now be able to fly to Tel Aviv through Abu Dhabi to do so and will be welcomed. By encouraging more visits, it will help counter the extremists who use the false narrative that the Al Aqsa Mosque is under attack and that Muslims cannot pray at this holy site. Expanded business and financial ties between these two thriving economies will also accelerate growth and economic opportunity across the Middle East. This agreement will allow further advancement of the President’s vision for finding a comprehensive, fair, realistic, and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians and in the region.
On August 13, 2020, the UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Anwar Gargash, announced the UAE's agreement to normalize relations with Israel saying that his country wanted to deal with the threats facing the two-state solution, specifically annexation of the Palestinian territories, and urging the Palestinians and Israelis to return to the negotiating table. He indicated that he did not think that there will be any embassy in Jerusalem until after there is a final agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis. According to US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, "Israel and the United Arab Emirates will fully normalize their diplomatic relations. They will exchange embassies and ambassadors and begin cooperation across the board and on a broad range of areas including tourism, education, healthcare, trade and security."
A joint statement issued by Trump, Netanyahu, and Zayed, read: "This historic diplomatic breakthrough will advance peace in the Middle East region and is a testament to the bold diplomacy and vision of the three leaders and the courage of the United Arab Emirates and Israel to chart a new path that will unlock the great potential in the region." The UAE said it would continue to support the Palestinian people and that the agreement would maintain the prospect of a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine. Despite the agreement however, Netanyahu stated that Israel's sovereignty claim to the Jordan Valley was still on the agenda and only frozen for the time being.
Zayed tweeted that the "UAE and Israel also agreed to cooperation and setting a roadmap towards establishing a bilateral relationship."
It is expected that the peace accord will be signed in the White House in early September.
As early as 1971, the year in which the UAE became an independent country, the first president of the UAE Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan had referred to Israel as "the enemy." The UAE and the United States had a strategic relationship since the 1990 Gulf War, growing to a significant US Air Force presence at Al Dhafra Air Base after the September 11 attacks. In November 2015, Israel announced that it would open a diplomatic office in the UAE, which would be the first time in more than a decade that Israel had an official presence in the Persian Gulf. In August 2019, Israel's foreign minister Israel Katz made a public declaration about military cooperation with the UAE amidst rising tensions with Iran.
In the months leading up to the agreement, Israel had been working in secret with the UAE to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. European news media reported that Mossad had discreetly obtained health equipment from Gulf states. Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, reported at the end of June 2020 that the two countries were in cooperation to fight the coronavirus and that the head of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen, had traveled numerous times to the UAE. However, the UAE appeared to downplay this a few hours later by revealing that it was merely an arrangement among private companies rather than at state level.
The move also comes in the wake of the Trump administration's repudiation of the Iran nuclear deal and following persistent Israeli suspicions that the Iranian nuclear program includes a program to develop atomic bomb capacities, something which Tehran denies. Currently, Iran and Saudi Arabia are engaged in backing different factions in proxy wars from Syria to Yemen, with the UAE supporting the Saudi-led and US-sponsored coalition against the Iran-aligned forces. In recent years, the countries' informal relations warmed considerably and they engaged in extensive unofficial cooperation based on their joint opposition to Iran's nuclear program and regional influence.
The agreement is also officially called the "Abraham Accord" in honor of Abraham, the patriarch of the three major Abrahamic religions of the world—Judaism, Islam and Christianity.
The agreement represented a major policy reversal for Netanyahu, who had long pushed for increasing settlements in the occupied West Bank, with an objective of annexing the territory. Netanyahu faced political pressure to demonstrate flexibility, as three recent elections gave him only a plurality in a coalition government and he faced a criminal prosecution in 2021. In 2019, the Trump administration reversed decades of American policy by declaring that the West Bank settlements did not violate international law, a decision that threatened the two-state solution that had long been seen as the key to lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The Trump administration's Middle East policy, crafted by presidential senior advisor Jared Kushner and released in January 2020, approved Netanyahu's plan to annex existing settlements. After Yousef Al Otaiba, the UAE ambassador to the United States, wrote a June 2020 opinion piece warning that annexation would threaten better relations between Israel and the Arab world, Kushner saw an opportunity and stepped in to facilitate talks. After negotiators had reached agreement, Trump, Netanyahu and UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed held a conference call immediately prior to a formal announcement.
Kelly Craft, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, celebrated the announcement, calling it "a huge win" for President Trump and for the world, saying that the diplomatic ties show "just how hungry for peace we all are in this world," and how Middle Eastern countries are all understanding the need "to stand firm against a regime that is the number one state sponsor of terrorism — Iran".
Longtime New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who has for decades written about international geopolitics and has been a frequent critic of Trump policies, hailed the agreement as "exactly what Trump said it was in his tweet: a 'HUGE breakthrough.'"
Joe Biden, Trump's opponent in the 2020 US presidential election, praised the agreement as it "builds on the efforts of multiple administrations to foster a broader Arab–Israeli opening, including the efforts of the Obama–Biden administration to build on the Arab Peace Initiative."
Jared Kushner, the primary Trump administration official involved in negotiating the agreement, stated while speaking to CBS News that the deal would make the Middle East more peaceful and hopeful, which would mean fewer American troops would need to be deployed in the region. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the deal was an important step toward stabilizing the region and was good for the whole world. Most of the World praises and positive input about the “historical peace agreement” between Israel and United Arab Emirate.
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