An HonestReporting analysis of English-language state-backed media outlets that focus on the Middle East seemingly exposes fault lines along the issue of Israel’s normalization of ties with Arab nations under the auspices of the Abraham Accords.
The deep dive therefore acts as a barometer of the warmth of relations between the Jewish state and various regional countries.
For example, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei last week slammed the Trump administration-brokered agreements that forged formal diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan as well as Morocco.
“Some governments have unfortunately made errors — have made big errors and have sinned in normalizing [their relations] with the usurping and oppressive Zionist regime,” Khamenei said, referring to the Jewish state.
“It is an act against Islamic unity, they must return from this path and make up for this big mistake,” he added.
This, from the leader of the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism who has repeatedly called for the eradication of Israel and been accused of pursuing an illicit project to produce the means — in the form of a nuclear weapon — to achieve that aim.
Iranian-backed media outlets have toed Khamenei’s line.
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The state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) on October 11 published an article titled, “Iranian, Pakistani parliamentarians emphasize Islamic unity against common challenges,” in which the Abraham Accords were framed in terms of the United States “beating the drums of confrontation, and on the other hand, the Zionist regime… seeking to incite war and sow the seeds of hypocrisy and division among Muslims.”
An IRNA report on October 20 quoted Hamas envoy to Tehran Khaled Al Qodumi as saying that “the normalization of relations is one of the signs of the Zionist regime’s defeat.”
Renewed interest in the Abraham Accords comes on the backdrop of the Israeli parliament’s recent inauguration of a caucus to advance regional peace. A launch event, held at the Jerusalem Museum of Tolerance, was attended by members of the previous Israeli and American administrations under which the agreements were signed, including former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-US senior White House advisor Jared Kushner, who was accompanied by Ivanka Trump.
The Abraham Accords are the first of their kind since Israel and Jordan signed a peace deal in 1994, which came a year after the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinians and, prior to that, the Israel-Egypt peace treaty of 1979.
Reports of additional deals have continued to surface despite opposition from the Palestinian Authority, which views Israel’s diplomatic inroads as a threat to the perceived centrality of solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
For its part, Turkey’s state-owned Anadolu Agency on October 13 published a report about the Doha Global Security Forum, at which Qatar’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman Al Thani “ruled out that Arab-Israeli normalization agreements will resolve the Middle East peace crisis.”
“We should not focus on economic normalization and forget the [Israeli] occupation of Arab lands,” the diplomat was quoted as saying.
Similarly, an October 16 report in the Turkish outlet highlighted an article penned by American Middle East commentator Douglas London in which the former CIA officer contended that the Abraham Accords could, instead of ushering in regional peace, empower rogue regimes and entities that were excluded from the diplomatic process.
“Once again, the US is placing all its eggs in the baskets of autocratic leadership while neglecting the Palestinians and the continued resonance of their cause in the broader Arab and Muslim world,” London’s piece was cited verbatim by the Anadolu Agency.
While relations between Israel and Turkey were already strained prior to the Abraham Accords, their advent has apparently given President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has offered his country as a safe haven for Hamas’ leadership, more ammunition with which to bash the Jewish state.
Meanwhile, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) has also come out harshly against the normalization pacts. In a September 4 piece about a meeting between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Talal Naji, the secretary-general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and Israel, SANA reported that “in the light of waves of official Arab normalization with the Zionist entity, Naji affirmed that the unity of Palestinian people and their resistance is the only option to respond to the frustration and division projects [the Abraham Accords].”
In a June 25 report by SANA detailing a meeting of the Arab Lawyers’ Union, the group’s head was quoted as saying that his foremost goal is “the struggle to liberate the occupied Arab lands and against Zionist racism and American imperialism and resistance to normalization in all its forms.” A June 22 piece detailing a seminar about the “Al-Quds [Jerusalem] Intifada,” which preceded May’s Hamas-initiated conflict against Israel, quoted a participant as stressing “that the popular uprising in the occupied al-Quds expressed the stance of the Palestinian people towards resisting the occupation and commitment to their legitimate rights and rejection of all forms of normalization with it.”
Al-Assad’s regime is closely tied to Iran and actively supports Hezbollah’s terrorist operations against the Jewish state.
Not surprising, then, a September 25 article in Hezbollah’s official news outlet in Lebanon, Al-Manar, made clear that Baghdad holds “that normalization is constitutionally, legally and politically rejected in Iraq.” The news agency on September 14 cited a political leader who “described the normalization deal between [Bahrain’s] Al-Manama regime and the Zionist enemy as a mere treachery.” The source also threatened that “the Arab regimes, which normalized ties with ‘Israel’… [attached their] destiny to that of the occupation entity.”
On the flip side, the UAE’s Khaleej Times on October 27 published a piece by Israeli President Isaac Herzog that celebrated the burgeoning bilateral cooperation between Abu Dhabi and Jerusalem in the wake of the Abraham Accords.
Herzog also conveyed Jerusalem’s optimism that the deals could have a snowball effect.
“I hope and believe that other states will soon emulate the UAE’s brave decision to establish relations with Israel, inspired by the undeniable good this partnership will produce,” he wrote.
In this vein, the Saudi government-backed newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat on October 11 published an article about a trilateral meeting in Washington, D.C. between the top-ranking diplomats of the US, Israel and the UAE. The normalization agreements were described as “landmark diplomatic agreements” and mentioned four times that the summit was held with the intention of “boost[ing] the Abraham Accords.”
Asharq Al-Awsat on October 14 reported that Sudanese and Israeli officials had met in Abu Dhabi to resume talks related to the Abraham Accords, noting that Israel’s Minister for Regional Cooperation Esawi Frej stressed that ties with Khartoum would not negatively impact the Palestinians.
“My visit to the UAE encouraged me to consolidate the conviction that the Abraham Accords would present a push forward in the settlement path,” Frej reportedly said in reference to a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
There has been a noticeable thaw in relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, and the Gulf nation’s decision to join the Abraham Accords would be viewed by many as a major achievement that could produce a tectonic shift in the Middle East’s political and diplomatic alignment.
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