The Abraham Accords have been celebrated as a diplomatic triumph, a necessary step toward a peaceful and integrated Middle East. The proclaimed goals are seductive in their simplicity, including formal ties between Israel and Arab states, economic co-operation, tourism, security coordination against Iran and regional stability. The visible outcomes including direct flights from Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi, trade agreements, defence partnerships, gleaming embassies, seem to confirm a new era of pragmatic coexistence. However, to accept these stated aims at face value is not merely naive. It is wilful blindness. The real architecture of the Abraham Accords has nothing to do with peace, prosperity or stability. Its true foundation is the theological and political project of Greater Israel, the inexorable march toward the Third Temple and the establishment of Israeli dominance so absolute that no countervailing force, Arab, Persian or international, can ever arise.

The abandonment of Arab solidarity

The signatories to the Accords, including the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, did not suddenly abandon the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, which conditioned normalisation on a just resolution of the Palestinian conflict. That initiative, endorsed by all 22 members of the Arab League in Beirut, offered Israel full normalisation in exchange for complete withdrawal from occupied territories and a sovereign Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. The signatories did not forget the corpses of Gaza, the siege of Jenin or the daily humiliation of checkpoints. What changed was not a moral awakening but a strategic calculus.

The Gulf monarchies, exhausted by the Iranian threat and desperate for American security guarantees, accepted a bargain that includes normality with Israel and receiving advanced weaponry, intelligence co-operation and the blessing of the Trump administration. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made the transaction explicit when he formally notified Congress of a $23.37 billion arms package to the UAE, comprising 50 F-35 jets and 18 armed Reaper drone systems, and directly tied the sale to the UAE's decision to normalise ties with Israel. Sudan received removal from the US terrorism sponsors list. Morocco received American recognition of its claim over Western Sahara. The price of that bargain, hidden in the fine print, was the abandonment of any meaningful constraint on Israeli expansionism. The Palestinians were not merely sidelined. They were declared irrelevant.

The geography of silence

Consider what the Abraham Accords do not say. Not one line mentions settlements, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights or the Jordan Valley. Not one provision freezes Israeli annexation plans. According to the EU's 2023 settlement monitoring report, Israel advanced 30,682 housing units in occupied Palestinian territory in 2023, a 180 per cent increase over five years and the highest figure recorded in the West Bank since the signing of the Oslo Accords. The EU's 2024 follow-up report confirmed that Israel established five new settlements and legalised 70 illegal outposts through a specially created bypass mechanism that circumvented even its own formal approval process. By December 2025, Al Jazeera reported that the number of settlements and outposts in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem had risen by nearly 50 per cent under the current far-right government, from 141 in 2022 to 210. The UAE and Bahrain, having secured their photo opportunities and F-35 deals, said nothing.

The reason is simple. The Accords were never designed to resolve the conflict. They were designed to normalise it.

The theological dimension

The deeper truth, the one that Western policymakers refuse to utter, is theological. The Abraham Accords are not merely a realpolitik arrangement. They are a vehicle for the most radical strain of religious Zionism. The real goal, openly discussed in Israeli cabinet meetings and evangelical conferences from Jerusalem to Dallas, is Greater Israel, the biblical boundaries from the Nile to the Euphrates, the full incorporation of the West Bank, and the eventual displacement or subjugation of the Palestinian population.

At the heart of this vision stands the Third Temple. The Temple Mount, currently housing the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, must be cleared. The red heifer must be sacrificed. The ancient priesthood must be restored. This is not fringe mysticism. The Temple Institute operates openly in Jerusalem, its stated mission to rebuild the Third Temple on the site where Al-Aqsa Mosque stands. The Israeli government has funded the Temple Institute for decades, including through the Education Ministry and the Ministry of Culture. According to research by Jerusalem-based non-profit Ir Amim, the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture helped bypass standard regulations to import five red heifers from the United States in 2022 for use in the ritual sacrifice that Jewish law requires before Jews can ascend to the Temple Mount and rebuild.

The Abraham Accords, by drawing Arab states into a web of normalised relations, serve to neutralise any Islamic opposition to the Temple project.

Observe the progression

First, the Accords deliver diplomatic cover. Arab embassies in Tel Aviv signal that the Palestinian cause is no longer a red line. Second, they deliver economic integration. Israeli technology, gas and arms flow to the Gulf; Gulf investment flows into Israeli settlement infrastructure. Third, they deliver security co-operation. Joint air defences against Iran are built, but those same architectures can be used to suppress any future Palestinian uprising. The slow erosion of Islamic custodianship over Al-Aqsa is not an accident. It is the deliberate precondition for the temple.

The lesson is brutal

The Abraham Accords are the mechanism by which the Zionist project achieves its maximalist goals without firing a single additional shot. Why besiege Gaza when Cairo and Riyadh will do the diplomatic dirty work? Why annex the West Bank unilaterally when you can annex it slowly, settlement by settlement, while Arab foreign ministers smile for the cameras? Why build the Third Temple in a blaze of violence when you can build it brick by brick, decade by decade, under the cover of normalisation?

The Accords have not brought peace. They have perfected occupation. They have not resolved the conflict. They have frozen it in Israel's favour. Do not pretend that trade deals and tourism packages obscure the bulldozers in Sheikh Jarrah, the settlers in Hebron or the red heifers being raised in secret.

The real war has not ended. It has merely changed uniforms.