As Israeli President Isaac Herzog landed in Astana this week for the highest-level Israeli trip to Kazakhstan in a decade, and his first since Kazakhstan formally announced its intention to join the Abraham Accords, the warm welcome from the Muslim-majority nation carried weight that has been too quick to be dismissed. 

When Trump announced the news that Kazakhstan would join the Abraham Accords during a White House summit with Central Asian leaders at the end of 2025, the commentary ranged from tepid to dismissive, with “largely symbolic,” being the overriding assessment.

It is not hard to see why. The two countries have had full diplomatic relations since 1992, so no formal normalisation was needed, but this move said less about the relations between Israel and Kazakhstan, and more about the evolution of the Abraham Accords.

As President Tokayev stated: “I made a decision to bring my country into the Abraham Accords, and we believe that the Abraham Accords have fundamentally reconfigured the Middle East’s geopolitical architecture, creating a strategic framework for regional stability, shared........

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