When former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to the White House to sign the Abraham Accords last year, it seemed for a moment as if he and President Donald Trump had broken the Palestinian veto on the peace process. Israelis started flying to Dubai and a spirit of reconciliation appeared to be infecting the region.
Even Netanyahu’s biggest rivals and opponents were forced to congratulate him for what was, by all accounts, a surprising historic breakthrough. Four peace agreements and the normalization of relations with four pragmatic Arab states proved Netanyahu’s claim that it was possible to make peace without the Palestinians. The Abraham Accords were a devastating blow to the Israeli left after half a century of advocating for an end to the occupation and partition of “the land between the river and the sea” into two independent states.
