Most Israelis had never seen the two elegant gents standing alongside their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on the balcony overlooking the White House lawn on Sept. 15.

The foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani, signed their countries’ historic normalization agreements with Israel’s prime minister in the surprising mid-August breakthrough with the Gulf states. Even the senior members of Israel’s ministerial security cabinet were not in on the secret of the accelerated peace process and its outcome, and the players involved on the Arab side.

The three Arab leaders with whom Israeli leaders signed peace agreements in the past — Prime Minister Menachem Begin with President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin with PLO leader Yasser Arafat and Jordan’s King Hussein — were familiar figures in Israel. The public was also aware, to some extent, of the process that led to the agreements' signing.

But this week’s signings with the Gulf states were different — they were the culmination of lengthy, clandestine processes that had finally matured and were suddenly unveiled with all the skill of a magician.