Israel seems intent on undoing the Abraham Accords

OPINION:

Without a doubt, the most impressive foreign policy achievement of President Trump’s first term was the Abraham Accords. These agreements — made between Israel and Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Morocco — were seminal for a number of reasons, not least because they completely reframed the Middle East challenge.

Previously, efforts to bring generational harmony to the region consisted mostly of American and European diplomats — representing the nations that actually created the problems in the first place — hectoring the locals about notions such as “peace” and “coexistence” and whatnot.

Mr. Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner brought a completely novel approach to the problem: the simple and foundational acknowledgment that the knitting together of nations and peoples is much more likely when they have commercial interests in common. Were Mr. Trump anyone else, he would have won his much-desired Nobel Peace Prize for the Abraham Accords, and deservedly so.

Unfortunately, the Israel Defense Forces has spent much of the past two years doing its best to destroy Mr. Trump’s handiwork. Whatever else you might think about the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, it is now clear to all but the most dense partisans that the Israelis, our nominal allies and principal recipients of American largesse, have no intention whatsoever of stopping the killing in Gaza until there is no one left to kill, no matter what the Americans might say or want.

Whatever doubt may have existed about this point should have been erased by the recent airstrike in Qatar. That airstrike, executed against an Arab nation in which the United States has a large military base, was designed to destroy the ability of Hamas to negotiate an end to the war, specifically by killing the Hamas negotiators. Our ally and friend Israel gave us no meaningful warning of that attack.

It is not difficult to imagine what the Arab world must think of the attack. If the Americans are unable to prevent the Israeli regime from attacking an Arab nation that is friendly to the United States, one that hosts an American military base, what is the value of American friendship?

Perhaps not coincidentally, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed a mutual defense agreement a few days ago. That means, of course, that any conflict that touches the House of Saud will necessarily bring with it the risk of a nuclear war. The agreement was probably inevitable, given that it is likely that Saudi Arabia may have been a financial sponsor of the Pakistani nuclear efforts in the first place. Just so we didn’t miss the message, though, Saudi Arabia did not alert the U.S. government about the agreement until after it was signed.

In short, Israel’s indifference to American preferences, as well as its killing spree in Gaza, is complicating and retarding our efforts to maintain our other important alliances in the Middle East. It hasn’t helped us with our friends in Europe, either.

Despite all that, the American blind spot with respect to Israel remains impressive. A friend of mine who is about to join the administration noted that all “Islamists” (whatever that might be) deserved to die and that those who killed them were doing a service to God. Maybe, maybe not. It seems obvious that if God wanted them dead, he has the means to kill all of them himself, right now, without the need for anyone else to get their hands dirty.

A few weeks back, this column pointed out that the IDF estimated that as of January, as many as 20,000 people — including about 7,000 noncombatants (meaning women and children) — had been killed in Gaza. Those numbers have no doubt grown substantially. Some of those people were killed by American bullets and American shrapnel purchased by Israel. It is not something of which we should be proud.

You can’t blame Israel for pursuing what it perceives to be in its national interest. Nor can you blame Americans for wondering how far we are willing to go down this road and at what point, exactly, might we conclude that Israel may not be our friend and ally in every instance.

• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.