Israel summit shows ties with Arabs moving from ceremony to substance

Israel’s meeting with top diplomats from four Arab countries and the United States, set to start Sunday, is one of the strongest signs yet that the country is beginning to reap the dividends of normalization deals reached two years ago, a profound realignment of Middle Eastern powers that has been accelerated by the war in Ukraine.

The deals have also prompted Egypt, a longtime peace partner, to engage more meaningfully with Israel as Cairo tries to revive its role as Israel’s bridge to the Arab world. When Israel first announced the summit Friday, Egypt was not on the list of countries attending — the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Bahrain. But it was added Saturday.

The groundbreaking meeting — the first involving so many Arab, American and Israeli officials on Israeli soil at once — is evidence of Israel’s acceptance by key Arab leaders, said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, an Emirati political scientist. It suggests that the relationship between the United States and its Middle East partners is about to enter a new phase.

“This is a way to show that American friends, American partners, are speaking to America collectively, rather than individually,” he said. “Maybe that way, Washington will listen to us more on key issues.”

Israeli journalists and entrepreneurs tour Dubai on Oct. 26, 2020. Trade between Israel and the United Arab Emirates ballooned in 2021. (Dan Balilty for the New York Times)

Most Arab countries have yet to formalize relations with Israel, and polls suggest that many people in the Arab world do not support normalizing ties with Israel. But to Gulf leaders, the cost of disappointing the Arab street is outweighed by the benefits of sending a strong message to both to their longtime benefactor, the U.S., and their shared enemy, Iran.

The meeting in the Negev desert town of Sde Boker on Sunday and Monday will almost certainly be heavy on spectacle and symbolism. But it is also unquestionably the substance Israel has been hoping for. Although the U.S. helped Israel broker the diplomatic agreements in 2020 with the UAE, Morocco and Bahrain, it is Israel that can now act more publicly as a conduit between Washington and some Arab countries.

Almost absent from the conversation are the Palestinians, whose fate, it seems increasingly clear, is now of less immediate importance to key Arab governments than the threat of Iran and the opportunity of better trade and military ties with Israel.