On September 15, 2020, the foreign ministers of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates joined US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. On a balcony overlooking the South Lawn, they envisioned a region transformed.

UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed predicted that the accord’s “reverberations will be reflected on the entire region.”

“For too long, the Middle East has been set back by conflict and mistrust, causing untold destruction,” lamented Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Abdullatif al-Zayani.

Exactly five years later, bin Zayed was at a different gathering — one that underscored how little the Middle East had changed. Coming together last week in Qatar in the aftermath of a failed Israeli strike on Hamas’s leaders, senior officials from nearly 60 countries — including Israel’s archenemy Iran, and the three countries that normalized relations exactly 5 years before  — issued a joint statement from the summit urging “all states to take all possible legal and effective measures to prevent Israel from continuing its actions against the Palestinian people,” including “reviewing diplomatic and economic relations with it, and initiating legal proceedings against it.”

Five years after the signing of the Abraham Accords, there are undoubtedly encouraging signs of regional potential. At the same time, there is no question that ties have not met the heady expectations expressed at the White House in 2020, and that the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks sparked processes that are placing new strains on the relationships.

“Within the larger process, there are many events that distract us, delay us, stop us,” acknowledged Eitan Naeh, Israel’s ambassador to Bahrain until last month. “You veer off the path and then you come back — but you’re heading somewhere. I think it’s quite clear where we can get to, provided we don’t run into a Hamas massacre on a Saturday and a global pandemic.”

The Abraham Accords enjoyed three relatively stable years until the Hamas invasion and massacre.

Ties moved ahead rapidly under the Naftali Bennett-Yair Lapid government, with both leaders visiting Israel’s three newest Arab allies. Lapid hosted their foreign ministers in Israel at the Negev Forum and agreements across a range of fields were signed.

“We set up the embassy, a team, and the infrastructure for relations in terms of dialogue with the leadership and with the heads of key bodies there — the Foreign Ministry, the Finance Ministry, the prime minister, the king’s palace, the security apparati,” Naeh said of his work in Bahrain. “And of course, the business community, the youth. Dialogue with media organizations, journalists.”

But even before the war, there were clear indications that the accords faced long-term challenges.

According to polling, they were consistently becoming less popular on the streets of Israel’s new allies. Washington Institute polling showed 45% of Bahrainis holding very or somewhat positive views of the agreements in November 2020. That support had steadily eroded to a paltry 20% by March 2022.

The trend was the same in the UAE. The 49% of the country that disapproved of the Abraham Accords in 2020 has grown to over two-thirds as of August 2022. And only 31% of Moroccans favored normalization at that time, according to Arab........

© The Times of Israel