What have the Abraham Accords achieved four years on?

A set of US-brokered normalisation agreements between Arab states and Israel, known as the Abraham Accords, turned four years old on Sunday.

The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed the controversial accords on 15 September 2020 and were joined by Morocco and Sudan in the months after.

Despite Israel's war on Gaza and assault on the West Bank, as well as fears of a wider conflict with Iran and Lebanese group Hezbollah, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz claimed on social media platform X that the agreements had led to peace.

"The Abraham Accords have made peace in the region a reality, shattering the historical illusion that peace and prosperity in the Middle East are only possible under certain conditions, and proving that shared vision and cooperation are the path forward to a better future," he said.

What have the agreements led to?

Normalisation with Israel is highly unpopular in Arab countries, as shown in public opinion surveys, and is viewed by Palestinians as a betrayal of their national cause.

Until the Abraham Accords were signed, the general position of Arab states had been that there could be no formal ties with Israel without the establishment of a viable Palestinian state in territories currently occupied by the West Bank

While Egypt and Jordan agreed normalisation deals with Israel in the 20th century, the Arab League in 2002 adopted a Saudi-led plan that promised Israel regional integration if it accepted Palestine's independence.

The Abraham Accords have upended this plan by showing Israel that it does not have to compromise to win recognition in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

Palestinian writer Muhammad Shehada said in an opinion piece published by The New Arab in August 2021 that the agreement "had everything to do with autocratic regimes' desperation to secure their own thrones and bolster their power".

While Israel agreed to suspend plans to annex territory in the occupied West Bank alongside its normalisation of ties with the UAE, illegal settlements containing hundreds of thousands of people remain in the Palestinian territory, with the setller population increasing and new illegal settlement outposts being announced.

And, according to Israeli group Peace Now, in June this year Israel authorised its largest West Bank land grab since the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinians.

War on Gaza, attacks on the West Bank

In a Time magazine article published in December, Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), wrote that instead of "curbing Israeli abuses", the Abraham Accords had "emboldened successive Israeli governments to further ignore Palestinian rights".

She said her organisation had "publicly called on the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan to immediately withdraw from the Accords and, alongside peace treaty signatories Egypt and Jordan, end all military coordination with Israel".

Israel has been waging a brutal war on the Gaza Strip since October last year in an offensive that has killed at least 41,206 people, according to the Palestinian enclave's health ministry.

Hospitals, places of worship, and residential buildings have come under attack, and South Africa has accused Israel of genocide at the International Court of Justice, the United Nations' top tribunal.

Palestinians in the West Bank have also suffered at the hands of Israeli forces and settlers, with hundreds killed since 7 October, the date the Gaza war started.

Israeli forces have lately stepped up their attacks on the north of the West Bank, launching an assault on the area in late August.

"The wave of destructive and deadly raids in the northern governorates is ultimately inseparable from Israel's wider designs in the West Bank, namely, ever-growing settlements and annexation," writer and analyst Ben White said in a recent opinion piece for The New Arab.