As Trump Seeks to Expand the Abraham Accords, Will More Muslim Countries Abandon Palestine?
From Saudi Arabia to Pakistan, normalization with Israel would be a huge geopolitical reward for an apartheid state and its genocidal war.
The announcement was teased in the manner of a reality television reveal. Who would the Bachelor hand a rose to? Which contestant would be going home? And who would be joining the Abraham Accords, enjoying peace (theoretically!) with Israel? The world held its breath until the following morning when we were told it was…Kazakhstan.
It was a peculiar announcement. Recognizing a country in the middle of its ongoing genocide of Gaza would seem to be rewarding the rogue state that has engaged in endless, live-streamed slaughter over the last 25 months. But this was made stranger by the fact that Kazakhstan has recognized Israel since 1992 and is one of Israel’s energy suppliers. As such, telling us what they did 33 years ago doesn’t really qualify as “news,” but regardless, Kazakhstan will now be the fourth member – alongside the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco – to formally join the accords. The move was hailed by President Donald Trump, who threatened on Truth Social that “there are many more countries trying to join this club of STRENGTH.”
‘I Think He’s Going to Join’
Israel, whose very existence is impossible without theft, can only secure its rapacious fantasy of ‘Greater Israel’ with more and more land – including that belonging to Lebanon, Syria, and its other neighbors. Yet, to many watchers of the region, the very inception of the Abraham Accords felt like an elaborate bait and switch – a theatrical setup that formalized the covert dealings these states already had with Israel, while paving the way for Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel. Reportedly, one of Hamas’s goals of Oct. 7 was to interrupt Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s desire to recognize the apartheid state. But more than two years of genocide later, and ahead of MBS’s visit planned to the US for next week, here we are again, subjected to watching a flurry of states scrape and bow before Israel so that the kingdom will be the last in a long line of subservient states to submit to Israel’s malign dominance. “I think he’s going to join,” Trump recently said of his friend, MBS. For its part, Saudi Arabia reportedly continues to insist that it won’t join the Abraham Accords without an agreement that includes a roadmap to Palestinian statehood.
Last month, as Trump visited the Middle East ahead of his Asia tour, there was chatter that the Indonesian president would visit Israel. His government denied the reports, and no visit took place, but the world’s largest Muslim-majority country has at times been floated as a nation that could join the Abraham Accords. Such a move, even the Times of Israel acknowledged last year, would be “a stunning about face.” The newspaper, however, made quite clear why Indonesia would betray its own much vaunted history of non-alignment, anti-imperialism, and independence to do so: access into the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). If you want to be let in to the neo-liberal club of 38 so-called ‘developed countries,’ unanimous support from its members is required, and though Indonesia began the process to be admitted last year, Israel objected to its entry. Normalization, or you can’t sit with us.
US envoy Tom Barrack, a man so impressively tactless he makes Trump look diplomatic, threatened Lebanon earlier this month to follow Damascus and open dialogue with Israel or else. Barrack compared Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s overtures to Israel as “speed dating” and revealed that the former wanted leader of the Syrian affiliate of al-Qaeda had already engaged in five rounds of discussions with Israel. Since taking over the country last year, Sharaa has promised that he will not allow Syria to be used as the launching pad for attacks against Israel. This is after Israel effectively disarmed the Syrian army, bombed the center of Damascus in broad daylight, set up at least nine military posts inside Syria, and captured yet more land besides the Golan, which Israel has occupied since the 1967 war. “Every morning when [Sharaa] opens his eyes at the Presidential Palace in Damascus, he will see the IDF watching him from the peak of the Hermon,” Defense Minister Israel Katz has said.
By the end of last year, Israeli soldiers were deeper inside Syria than ever before, 15 miles from the capital. This is what Barrack berates Lebanon for not pursuing – not peace but abject surrender. Israel has demolished villages in southern Lebanon, hunted and assassinated Lebanese journalists, set fire to thousands of acres of agricultural land, displaced over a million Lebanese, used banned white phosphorous in urban centers, and bombed Tyre, one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world. Israeli forces had invaded Lebanon for 18 years, during which they oversaw horrific massacres such as in Qana and Sabra and Shatilla. It was Hezbollah that forced their retreat in 2000 and again sent them packing in the summer war of 2006. For this, the US demands Hezbollah be disarmed, a move that would leave Lebanon, whose army is toothless and underpaid, effectively defenseless. In the southern village of Hula, Israeli soldiers spray-painted the Star of David to mark their presence, adding “The only good Shia is a dead Shia” in Hebrew. Who can resist such diplomatic overtures?
Where Pakistan Stands
What appears to be the highest value and consequential target for capitulation to the Abraham Accords is also, for me, the most personal: Pakistan. For all its dysfunction and failings, there is no question that Pakistan is a force to be reckoned with. Geopolitically, you would be hard-pressed to find a country more strategically placed: Pakistan shares borders with China, India, Iran, and Afghanistan. It is mineral and gas-rich. It boasts one of the largest armies in the world – one with tentacles everywhere and armed with sophistication and skill – and is the only Muslim-majority country in possession of a nuclear asset. Logically, Pakistan, founded to be a refuge for Muslims, should have led the vanguard against Israel and been a staunch defender of the Palestinian people, but it has done little more than pay meaningless lip service for the past 40-odd years. Most recently, the government nominated Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize.
And now, this wildly unpopular government has started to hint at the possibility of ‘peace’ with Israel. “Not recognizing Israel sounds nice,” a federal minister opined during a televised meeting, “but it’s just not possible in today’s world.” Remembering that during India’s attacks on Pakistan in May, the closest the two nuclear states have come to hot war in decades, Israel aided India with support, would be nice, but in today’s world, states are asked to put Israel’s welfare above their own national interests. Israel has been making overtures to Pakistan for some time now. In 2005, under the government of military dictator General Pervez Musharraf, there were handshakes and at least one meeting. Israel Hayom, the tabloid owned by the family of Israeli-American billionaire Miriam Adelson, reported that a British-Pakistani adviser to Prime Minister Imran Khan visited Israel and engaged in talks in 2020. The adviser, Sayed Zulfi Bukhari, denied it on Twitter. In recent years, Hasbara tours were organized for Pakistanis in the arts. Even though our passports do not allow us to visit Israel, off they went to do the work of cheap propagandists. Even Khan himself, a staunch critic of Israel, acknowledged that there was pressure from the US and other countries to engage in talks. When asked if he meant fellow Muslim states were leaning on Pakistan to recognize Israel during his government, Khan demurred, “There are things we cannot say. We have good relations with them.”
It was evident he was referring to Saudi Arabia, which holds Pakistan in a vice grip of debt.
Normalization Is Treason
For Pakistan – and for Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, et al. – to recognize Israel is an act of political suicide. Their populations, sickened by Israeli terror and the decimation of Gaza, will never forgive such betrayal. For Pakistan, it is an existential issue: there is no question that Israel would seek to dismantle or destroy its nuclear assets. What is the point of such capabilities if the state and its establishment are little more than vassals? Pakistan’s people have suffered injury upon injury from a military and their successive, approved governments that have denied them the most basic assurances: healthcare, education, safety, and order. And now, it appears prepared to degrade itself far beyond even our lowest expectations.
Normalization is seen as treason by millions of not just Muslims but also people around the world who have watched Israel’s horrific genocide in Gaza. If the protection of Muslims is not the mandate of Pakistan, then why are we a state? If the new Syria is ‘free,’ then why has it ceded its earth without barely a grumble? If Lebanon is a ‘failed state,’ as Barrack so charmingly put it, then why is the most powerful country in the world standing on its neck? If the holocaust of Gaza is not worth standing against, what does a country stand for?
Fatima Bhutto is an award-winning author and journalist. ‘Gaza: The Story of a Genocide,’ a collection of essays she co-edited, is now available. Her memoir, ‘The Hour of the Wolf,’ will be published in January.
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The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Zeteo.
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Insist on a real ceasefires or stop arms and money to Israel. USA Legislators who do not stop support for this false ceasefire should plan on not returning to USA Congress and losing their options to held political office. Peace enforced by stoping arms to Israel should include Gaza, the West Bank and all neighboring nations. Support only Palestinian approved government for their self rule. Stop the further destruction of Palestinian lands, farmlands and allow international aid in for reconstruction in all part of Gaza and the West Bank. Empty all Illegal settlements. Empty Isreali prisons of all not charged and found guilty of a crime. Illegal Settlements need to be given to Palestinians and Israeli's returned to Isreali or their original homeland. Expell them from illegal Settlements.
Agree wholeheartedly with Fatima; to comply with Abraham accord it will be an act of treason by Pakistan. Nuclear weapons were called the “peace makers” at one time but that mantra is valid no more, if you can’t use them to protect the people from genocide and ethnic cleansing what good are those. Pakistan has no reason to bend the knee to the oppressor regime of Netanyahu. No sir no can do never. You cannot let a a country who can’t survive without the American aid ( taxpayer money) be the mafia head of the world.