The Abraham Accords have already become a Middle East afterthought

Now, with Trump gone and Netanyahu only barely clinging to power, regional politics may already be pivoting away from the Abraham Accords. For all the happy optics of Emiratis vacationing in Tel Aviv and Israelis partying in Dubai, no new countries have joined on since the initial flurry under Trump. While the Biden administration welcomed healthier relations between Israel and the Arab world, it’s unclear how much it intends to build on Trump’s major foreign policy initiative. President Biden delayed his direct outreach to Netanyahu upon taking office; the first Middle Eastern leader that he spoke to was Jordan’s King Abdullah II, whose country is far more directly involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than the Gulf states. Relations between Jordan and Israel are also at a low ebb, a reflection, in part, of Trump and Netanyahu’s bruising disregard for Jordan as a traditional gatekeeper for Palestinian concerns.