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Source: https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2021/03/22/securing-peace-in-the-middle-east-after-trump/
Securing Peace in the Middle East
(Foundation for Defense of Democracies) Dennis Ross and Shany Mor - The Abraham Accords reversed the order of the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002: then, ending occupation came first and in return Israel got diplomatic recognition. Now, normalization comes first. Arab states have always put their interests first before the Palestinians, even if they elevated the Palestinian cause rhetorically. What is different now is there is a loss of fear about the Palestinian ability to mobilize a threatening reaction against those Arab leaders who make the decision to normalize with Israel because it serves their interests. Israel offers not just security benefits but can help when it comes to health, water, and agriculture. Building on the Abraham Accords won't just happen, it will require some active brokering by the Biden Administration. Passive support won't add to the accords. What has stood in the way of Palestinian self-rule is not the fervor of Palestinian claims for which they had no realistic capacity of achieving, but rather the conceptual unwillingness to agree to anything that might involve genuine reconciliation with the existence of Israel. A struggle for liberation wouldn't have this problem, and indeed others haven't. But a struggle for elimination of another people does. The Palestinians have had to bear the burden of the Arab struggle against a cosmically evil Israel whose very existence was seen as a monumental crime that needed to somehow be reversed. The widening circle of normalization with Israel reduces the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a cosmic one to a territorial one, where the difference in the competing territorial claims is actually quite minimal. Amb. Dennis Ross is counselor at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Dr. Shany Mor is an Adjunct Fellow at FDD.