While some have claimed that the designation of the term Abraham Accords was a last-minute decision, evidence suggests otherwise.
By BEN MOLLOV, Jerusalem Post,
US President Donald Trump has made the expansion of the Abraham Accords to include Saudi Arabia as a significant priority in his vision for the Middle East.
The primary impetus for the 2020 Abraham Accords with the UAE and Bahrain – and later to include Morocco and Sudan – were political and economic, and catalyzed by Israel’s agreement to desist or at least delay its imposition of sovereignty on portions of Judea and Samaria.
However, the cultural dimensions of the Accords and their Abrahamic theme should not be overlooked.
While some have claimed that the designation of the term Abraham Accords was a last-minute decision, as opposed to merely labeling it the UAE-Israel normalization accords, evidence suggests otherwise.
Its preamble refers to the “Arab and Jewish peoples as descendants of a common ancestor Abraham” and “in that spirit to foster in the Middle East a reality in which Muslims, Jews and Christians… live and are committed to a spirit of coexistence, mutual understanding and mutual respect.”
Intentional theme
In addition, a number of researchers and commentators affirmed that the Abrahamic theme was intentional. This represents a significant game changer in the Middle East as it implies conferring legitimacy upon the existence of a Jewish collective in the Middle East. This is in contrast to merely de facto recognition of Israel, as in the Egyptian-Israeli and Jordanian-Israeli peace treaties.
Furthermore, the interreligious dimension of peacebuilding between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East in general is insufficiently appreciated. My own work as a researcher/practitioner in this area of conflict resolution over several decades has affirmed the importance of this approach.
Among the most salient results of my research tracking Jewish-Arab/Israeli-Palestinian interreligious dialogues (many run by the Interfaith Encounter Association) is that although religious subjects on both sides tend to hold the most negative views of the other side, reinforcing the assumption that religion can be a source of conflict and hostility, once religious Jews and Arabs begin to appreciate the significant similarities in structure and practice in the two religions, their respective perceptions of the other side begin to change appreciably.
This is based on sound dynamics purported by social psychology theories, which maintain that when groups in conflict can find commonalities with each other, perceptions among members can change from negative to positive.
Indeed, no two religions are closer in structure and practice than Judaism and Islam. Both are religions of law and many concepts and terms/strictures – such as kosher and halal, Halacha and Sharia, prayer and fasting – are remarkably similar.
In fact, when the Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon began preparing for the ill-fated 2003 Columbia space shuttle mission, he consulted rabbinical authorities on questions such as how to determine times of prayer and Shabbat in outer space.
The decisions he received were remarkably similar to the advice of two Muslim cosmonauts – one from Saudi Arabia and one from Malaysia – who asked for guidance on similar questions such as times of prayer in outer space.In both cases, the ruling was essentially that times of prayer would be calculated according to the point of reference of the launch site rather than the experiencing of night or day in orbit.
Jewish-Arab discussions
AS A practitioner, I have been running a Jewish-Arab Interreligious Dialogue course at Bar-Ilan University, under the auspices of the School of Communication, which has been extremely successful over the last six years – even during the background of war. The course is built upon the pillars of “mutual respect, self respect, and mutual enrichment.”
While this workshop course has attracted anywhere from 30 to 40 students per year – Jews and Arabs – in my view, it has significance beyond the immediate participants and has been something of a model that might be replicated on a wider scale.
Politics are not avoided but “transcended” insofar as mutual identities are the basis of conflict in the Middle East, and the course is aimed at achieving new relationships based on a different appreciation of the religion and heritage of both sides.
Admittedly, there has been an overall reluctance by many diplomats and conflict resolution actors to involve the religious dimension of the conflict as it is assumed that religion can only be a source of further hostility and escalation.
However, there is no escaping the religious dimension as the layers of conflict are ultimately rooted in religious and cultural identity. Thus, a religiously and culturally based conflict requires religious and cultural strategies to moderate and ideally create new relationships between Jews and Arabs.
The manner in which the issue of religion is approached is cardinal. In Islamic and Jewish dialogue efforts, questions such as who the “real” favored son is should not be debated (i.e. Isaac or Ishmael). It is sufficient to acknowledge that Abraham had two sons whom he loved.
As noted, any number of rituals and practices in both Islam and Judaism are quite similar and can be the basis of enrichment and a positive animating spirit. Also important is the identification of moderate approaches in both religious heritages, which can serve as an ideological basis for mutual acceptance.
American and Israeli leaders have contended that the outcome of the current conflict has paved the way for a new strategic situation related to balances of power and alignments of interest. However, the vision of the Abrahamic theme of unity ought to accompany the expansion of the Abraham Accords as it hopefully includes new and important actors.
The writer is on the faculty of the Graduate Program in Conflict Management and Resolution at the School of Communication, and runs the Project for the Study of Religion, Culture and Peace at Bar-Ilan University. He is also the author of a newly released book, Approaches to Jewish-Arab Interreligious Dialogue and Peacebuilding: Theory and Practice (IGI Global, 2025).
