Jason Greenblatt’s ‘In the Path of Abraham’ offers an inside track on the Middle East peace process

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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken pose for a picture with the foreign ministers of Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Morocco and the UAE following their meeting in Negev, Israel, on March 28, 2022. AFP file)
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Updated 22 May 2023
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Jason Greenblatt’s ‘In the Path of Abraham’ offers an inside track on the Middle East peace process

  • Abraham Accords have normalized ties between Israel and an Arab quartet: UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco
  • Greenblatt: Normalization leads to a reasonable, peaceful settlement of the Middle East conflict

MISSOURI, USA: With the two-year anniversary of the historic Abraham Accords upon us, it seems as good a time as any to reflect upon the changes they heralded for the Middle East and North Africa.

The agreement has normalized relations so far between Israel and four Arab countries: the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.

Jason Greenblatt’s “In the Path of Abraham” offers readers an inside account of the thinking and process which made the accords possible. Appointed by President Donald Trump in 2016 as representative for international negotiations, Greenblatt, together with Jared Kushner, Ambassador David Friedman and Kushner aide Avi Berkowitz led the US efforts to broker peace between Israel, the Palestinians and their neighbors.

The book offers a very accessible, clear and forthright account of how they approached this monumental task. In the process, Greenblatt and his colleagues had to throw out much of the received wisdom on the Arab-Israeli conflict accumulated over the years and propagated by a vast army of “experts” on the issue.

The long-held consensus view on this conflict maintained that one could not pursue peace and normalization between Israel and various Arab states until after a final peace deal with the Palestinians had been achieved.

That peace deal with the Palestinians proved ever elusive, however, even to this day, effectively giving the Palestinian political parties a veto over anything to do with Israel in the region.

The MENA region has changed over time, however, even if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict appears frozen in place.

The old experts, from academics and think tanks to intelligence officers and people manning desks in the State Department or various foreign ministries, largely failed to appreciate the changes. 

Pan-Arabism does not exert the same hold over the Arab world that it once did, and while most Arab leaders and their public remain very sympathetic to the Palestinians, they also have their own state interests to look to. 

Iran, in particular, looms very large within the risk assessments of various Arab states, and in Israel they can find a militarily and technologically powerful — and determined foe — of Iran with which to make common cause. 

An integral part of the MENA region, whether some like it or not, Israel is also not going anywhere. Indeed, in the present circumstances, Israel will neither lose sight of the threat that Tehran poses, nor fail to grasp the geopolitical significance of a nuclear-armed Iran. 

Common interests between many Arab states and Israel go beyond Iran as well, as Greenblatt so astutely understood, and the Palestinian leadership’s intransigence in the face of various Israeli peace offers over the years could no longer be permitted to veto such a confluence of interests.

FASTFACT

2020

The Abraham Accords, signed in September 2020, normalized relations between Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.

He writes: “By continuing to make perfect the enemy of the good, the Palestinian Authority had, slowly but surely, eroded much of what was once rock-solid political and financial support by its neighbors.

“For more and more Arab countries, it was one thing to support the desire of Palestinians for a peaceful state, but it had become increasingly untenable to continue to make that cause a higher priority than the competing needs of their citizens who both desired and deserved a more prosperous future as well.” 

That common interest resides not just in geopolitical alignments and threats, but in the social and economic realms as well — including energy, food, water, health, and other issues.

Greenblatt provides the example of a recent Rand Corporation study that “forecasts nearly $70 billion in direct new aggregate benefits for Israel and its four partners (the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan) in these free trade agreements over the next decade and the creation of almost 65,000 new jobs.

If all five partners, in turn, trade with one another in a plurilateral FTA, Rand calculates the additional aggregate benefits will exceed $148 billion and the jobs created to exceed 180,000.” 

The Arab leaders in the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan proved far-sighted enough and courageous enough to see all this as well and take the necessary steps. 

Advocates of the Abraham Accords model argue, rightly or wrongly, that reversing the equation of “peace with the Palestinians first, normalization with the Arab world after” increases the likelihood of arriving at an Israeli-Palestinian peace as well. As evidence, they say some 70 years of Arab League boycotts and shunning of Israel certainly did nothing to achieve peace.

For better or worse, the united Arab front against Israel convinced Israelis of the need to remain militarily strong and vigilant, decreasing their ability to imagine any scenario in which the Arab world would truly accept them and make genuine peace.

Yet since everyone pretty much agrees that an Israeli-Palestinian negotiated peace remains the most difficult and elusive objective, why not marshal the assistance of all those who share that goal? 

Most of the Arab states in the MENA region most definitely want a reasonable peaceful settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and now the ones that have normalized relations with Israel can help bring it about. 




Jason Greenblatt (L) meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah on May 25, 2017. (AFP file)

They can help broker talks, they can help persuade both Israelis and Palestinians to find a middle ground somewhere, and, most of all, they can become stronger forces for moderate politics in the region.

Greenblatt and his team understood all this. They did not just sense that the Arab region was ready for a change in policy, however.

They tirelessly worked to help bring about the change for the better, and in the process probably improved the lives of millions in the region. 

For that we all owe them our thanks. 

Unfortunately, the people who could most benefit from reading this account behind the Abraham Accords will probably never do so. People do not, as a rule, like to read about how they were wrong. There are also more minor things in the book to take issue with, which might dissuade some readers.

Many Americans (including this reviewer) will not at all share the author’s extremely high regard for former President Trump, for instance. To such readers, the same president who threw Washington’s Kurdish allies under the bus in 2017 and 2019 — the very allies who defeated Daesh with a US-backed coalition — cannot be trusted to understand the region nor to always make the right call.




Israeli settlers throw stones at Palestinian protesters during a demonstration against settlement expansion in al-Mughayer in the occupied West Bank on July 29, 2022. (AFP file)

I would also expect Israeli policymakers to receive at least some criticism at some point somewhere in the book. The issue of illegal settlements might be a case in point — I still cannot understand how Israel can claim more land in the occupied West Bank (Judea and Samaria) without accepting (meaning offering citizenship to) the people there.

The simple unavoidable calculus supporting a two-state solution still seems to be that you cannot have one without the other — if you take all the land, you need to take all the people there too and offer them equal citizenship. If offering them equal citizenship is too dangerous for Israel, then settlements need to stop in order for the Palestinians to retain enough land for a viable and dignified state of their own — whenever they might be ready for that. 

Finally, the issue of the Iran nuclear accords remains a thorny one. The uncomfortable truth is that Iran has made more progress toward building nuclear weapons since Trump pulled the US out of the nuclear accord than in the years following its signing. There may be no good answers here as long as the US lacks the appetite for military conflict with Iran, a lack of appetite that the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations all shared.




(L-R) Bahrain FM Abdullatif al-Zayani, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump, and UAE FM Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan during the signing the the Abraham Accords. (AFP)

In Greenblatt’s telling of the issue, things are a good deal simpler: The nuclear deal with Iran was a con job that Obama and Kerry fell for, and Trump put a stop to that. The counterargument is, apart from the targeted assassination of Qassem Soleimani in January 2020, the Trump administration achieved little in the matter of defanging Iran.

The regime remains solidly in place, uranium enrichment has expanded rather than quieted down, and Iranian influence in places such as Iraq and Syria is stronger than ever (especially after Trump chose to let Iranian and Iraqi forces attack Washington’s Kurdish allies in October 2017).

These quibbles notwithstanding, Greenblatt’s book remains well worth picking up. The narrative regarding peace and progress in the MENA region, including an almost contagious optimism for such, could use more space on any bookshelf.

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“In the Path of Abraham,” Jason D. Greenblatt (New York: Wicked Son Publishing, hard cover, 325 pages). 

Reviewer: David Romano, Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics, Missouri State University

 

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Turkiye says Israel leading Middle East to ‘total disaster’

Updated 12 sec ago
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Turkiye says Israel leading Middle East to ‘total disaster’

“Israel is now leading the region to the brink of total disaster,” Fidan said
He called for an end to the “unlimited aggression” against Iran

ISATANBUL: Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on Saturday accused Israel of leading the Middle East toward “total disaster” by attacking Iran on June 13.

“Israel is now leading the region to the brink of total disaster by attacking Iran, our neighbor,” he told a summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Istanbul.

“There is no Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian, Yemeni or Iranian problem but there is clearly an Israeli problem,” Fidan said.

He called for an end to the “unlimited aggression” against Iran.

“We must prevent the situation from deteriorating into a spiral of violence that would further jeopardize regional and global security,” he added.

Speaking after Fidan, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Western leaders of providing “unconditional support” to Israel.

He said Turkiye would not allow borders in the Middle East to be redrawn “in blood.”

“It is vital for us to show more solidarity to end Israel’s banditry — not only in Palestine but also in Syria, in Lebanon and in Iran,” he told the OIC’s 57 member countries.

The OIC, founded in 1969, says its mission is to “safeguard and protect the interests of the Muslim world in the spirit of promoting international peace and harmony.”

Iran says more than 400 killed since start of war with Israel

Updated 21 min 56 sec ago
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Iran says more than 400 killed since start of war with Israel

  • Attacks have claimed the lives of over 400 defenseless Iranians and left 3,056 others wounded

TEHRAN: Israeli strikes on Iran have killed more than 400 people since they began last week, Iran’s health ministry said in an updated toll on Saturday, as fighting raged between the two foes.

“As of this morning, Israeli attacks have claimed the lives of over 400 defenseless Iranians and left 3,056 others wounded by missiles and drones,” health ministry spokesman Hossein Kermanpour said in a post on X.


Erdogan says UNRWA to open office in Turkiye, calls for more support for agency

Updated 21 June 2025
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Erdogan says UNRWA to open office in Turkiye, calls for more support for agency

  • Turkiye has called Israel’s assault on Gaza genocide and its move to ban UNRWA a violation of international law
  • “We expect our organization and each member state to provide financial and moral support to UNRWA to thwart Israel’s games,” Erdogan said

ANKARA: The United Nations’ Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA will open an office in Ankara, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday, urging Muslim countries to give the agency more support after Israel banned it.

Israel last year banned UNRWA, saying it had employed members of Palestinian militant group Hamas who took part in the October 2023 attacks on Israel that triggered the Gaza war.

Turkiye has called Israel’s assault on Gaza genocide and its move to ban UNRWA a violation of international law, particularly amid worsening humanitarian conditions in Gaza, which has been reduced to rubble with millions displaced.

Addressing foreign ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Istanbul, Erdogan said opening an Ankara UNRWA office would deepen Turkiye’s support for the agency.

“We must not allow UNRWA, which plays an irreplaceable role in terms of taking care of Palestinian refugees, to be paralyzed by Israel. We expect our organization and each member state to provide financial and moral support to UNRWA to thwart Israel’s games,” Erdogan said.

A Turkish diplomatic source said Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini were expected to sign an accord on the sidelines of the OIC meeting in Istanbul on establishing the office.

Turkiye has given UNRWA $10 million a year between 2023 and 2025. In 2024, it also transferred $2 million and sent another $3 million from its AFAD disaster management authority.

Israel has handed responsibility for distributing much of the aid it lets into Gaza to a new US-backed group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which operates three sites in areas guarded by Israeli troops. The UN has rejected the GHF operation saying its distribution work is inadequate, dangerous and violates humanitarian impartiality principles.

Previously, aid to Gaza’s 2.3 million residents had been distributed mainly by UN agencies such as UNRWA with thousands of staff at hundreds of sites across the enclave.


Israel says killed three Iranian commanders in fresh wave of strikes

Updated 21 June 2025
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Israel says killed three Iranian commanders in fresh wave of strikes

  • Israel’s military said its fighter jets successfully targeted top Iranian official Saeed Izadi
  • It also announced the deaths of two other commanders from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards

JERUSALEM: Israel said Saturday it had killed three Iranian commanders in its unprecedented bombing campaign across the Islamic republic, which Foreign Minister Gideon Saar claimed had already delayed Tehran’s presumed nuclear plans by two years.

Israel’s military said its fighter jets successfully targeted top Iranian official Saeed Izadi, in charge of coordination with Palestinian militant group Hamas, in Qom south of Tehran and announced the deaths of two other commanders from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

As Israel continued to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities and military targets, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said in an interview that by the country’s own assessment, it had “already delayed for at least two or three years the possibility for them to have a nuclear bomb.”

“We will do everything that we can do there in order to remove this threat,” Saar told German newspaper Bild, asserting Israel’s onslaught would continue.

Israel and Iran have traded wave after wave of devastating strikes, after Israel launched its aerial campaign on June 13, saying Tehran was on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon — an ambition Iran has denied.

Israel said it had attacked Iran’s Isfahan nuclear site for a second time after its air force said it had also launched salvos against missile storage and launch sites in central Iran.

The military later said it struck military infrastructure in southwest Iran.

US President Donald Trump warned on Friday that Tehran has a “maximum” of two weeks to avoid possible American air strikes, as Washington weighs whether to join Israel’s unprecedented bombing campaign.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived in Istanbul on Saturday, for a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to discuss the conflict.

Top diplomats from Britain, France and Germany met Araghchi in Geneva on Friday, and urged him to resume talks with the United States that had been derailed by Israel’s attacks.

But Araghchi told NBC News after the meeting that “we’re not prepared to negotiate with them (the United States) anymore, as long as the aggression continues.”

Trump was dismissive of European diplomatic efforts, telling reporters, “Iran doesn’t want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help in this.”

Trump also said he is unlikely to ask Israel to stop its attacks to get Iran back to the table.

“If somebody’s winning, it’s a little bit harder to do,” he said.

Any US involvement would likely feature powerful bunker-busting bombs that no other country possesses to destroy an underground uranium enrichment facility in Fordo.

A US-based NGO, the Human Rights Activists News Agency, said on Friday that based on its sources and media reports at least 657 people have been killed in Iran, including 263 civilians.

Iran’s health ministry said on Saturday at least 350 people had been killed in the Israeli strikes including military commanders, nuclear scientists and civilians.

Nasrin, 39, who gave only her first name, explained she had been thrown across a room in her Tehran home by an Israeli strike.

“I just hit the wall. I don’t know how long I was unconscious. When I woke up, I was covered in blood from head to toe,” she said as she received treatment at Hazrat Rasool hospital in the Iranian capital.

Traffic police and Fars news agency reported congestion on roads into Tehran on Saturday, indicating some inhabitants were returning to the capital.

Internet access remained highly unstable and limited in Tehran on Saturday, with slow connections and many sites still inaccessible, according to AFP journalists.

Iran’s retaliatory strikes have killed at least 25 people, in Israel, according to official figures.

Overnight, Iran said it targeted central Israel with drones and missiles.

Israeli rescuers said there were no casualties after an Iranian missile struck a residential building in Beit She’an.

At the site of the strike in the north of Israel, mounds of soil had been gouged from the ground and the wall of a ground-floor room destroyed.

Israel’s National Public Diplomacy Directorate said more than 450 missiles have been fired at the country so far, along with about 400 drones.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had targeted military sites and air force bases.

Western powers have repeatedly expressed concerns about the rapid expansion of Iran’s nuclear program, questioning in particular the country’s accelerated uranium enrichment.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s chief Rafael Grossi has said that Iran is the only country without nuclear weapons to enrich uranium to 60 percent.

However, it added that there was no evidence Tehran had all the components to make a functioning nuclear warhead.

Grossi told CNN it was “pure speculation” to say how long it would take Iran to develop weapons.


GCC ambassadors raise concern about safety of nuclear facilities amid Israel-Iran conflict

Updated 21 June 2025
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GCC ambassadors raise concern about safety of nuclear facilities amid Israel-Iran conflict

  • The ambassadors warned Grossi during a meeting in Vienna about the “dangerous repercussions” of targeting nuclear facilities
  • The warning comes after the Israeli military said at one point that it had struck Iran's Bushehr facility, but later said the comment had been made by mistake

CAIRO: Gulf Cooperation Council ambassadors have expressed concerns to UN nuclear watchdog chief Rafael Grossi about the safety of nuclear facilities close to their countries amid the Israeli-Iranian crisis, Qatar state news agency reported on Saturday.
The ambassadors warned Grossi during a meeting in Vienna about the “dangerous repercussions” of targeting nuclear facilities.
The warning comes after the Israeli military said at one point on Thursday that it had struck the Russian-built Bushehr facility, but later said the comment had been made by mistake. Bushehr is Iran’s only operating nuclear power plant, which sits on the Gulf coast.
The potential consequences of an attack on the plant — contaminating the air and water — have long been a concern in the Gulf states.