Peace accords with Israel could be at risk

WASHINGTON — For Sudan, agreeing to normalize relations with Israel was the price of removal from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.

A similar diplomatic deal with Israel sealed Morocco’s demand for the United States to recognize its sovereignty over the Western Sahara region.

United Arab Emirates officials who wanted to buy stealthy F-35 fighter jets from the United States first had to sign on to the Abraham Accords, the product of President Donald Trump’s campaign to foster stability between Israel and estranged or even hostile Muslim states.

In each case, the incentives that the Trump administration dangled in exchange for the détente could fall through — either rejected by Congress or reversed by the administration of President-elect Joe Biden.

That puts at risk not only the series of regional agreements for rapprochement but also exacerbates a worldview that the United States cannot be depended upon to hold up its end of diplomatic deals.

The Abraham Accords, Trump’s signature foreign policy achievement, have either newly brokered or restarted economic and political ties for Israel with Bahrain, the UAE, Sudan and Morocco. Officials familiar with the administration’s efforts said Oman and Tunisia

might be the next states to join, and the warming could be expanded to nations in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa even after Trump leaves office in January.

Formally easing tensions between Israel and its regional neighbors is a success, to be sure, that past Republican and Democratic presidents alike have long sought to foment.

“All diplomacy is transactional, but these transactions are mixing things that ought not to have been mixed,” said Robert Malley, president and chief executive of the International Crisis Group, who is close to Antony Blinken, Biden’s pick for secretary of state.

Malley predicted that the incoming Biden administration would try to walk back or dilute parts of the normalization deals that defy international norms, as in the case of Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara, or otherwise challenge long-standing U.S. policy, like the F-35 sales to the UAE.