 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. On February 14, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett arrived in Manama for a two-day state visit to Bahrain. This is the highest-level visit since the two countries signed the Abraham Accords normalizing ties in 2020. There has been a lot of high-level diplomacy among Abraham Accords signatories in recent times, including visits by Bennett and Israeli President Isaac Herzog to the United Arab Emirates. What kind of relationships have been built in the aftermath of the Abraham Accords, which was a key initiative of the Donald Trump administration? What motivations have driven the signatories? Rania Khalik of Breakthrough News explains. So with the Abraham Accords, you know, one thing about them that I find a little bit silly is the fact that they're referred to as some sort of peace deal when, you know, it's silly to call it a peace deal between countries that have never been at war. I mean, Israel's never actually been at war with the UAE or Bahrain or whatnot. But you know, the Abraham Accords was really more of a project of Jared Kushner under the Trump administration. But of course, the Biden administration doesn't really, you know, it doesn't oppose the Abraham Accords, but they're not really trying to expand them. The main concern of the Biden team is really trying to deal with the Iran deal and sort of placate the enemies of Iran. So they're not objecting too much to the Abraham Accords, but they're not pushing them so hard. It's really Israel. That's pushing hard to continue to expand them, which you saw with the recent meeting between the Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett going to Bahrain. And Israel's of course trying to expand the Abraham Accords because the Israeli dream really is to have Arab recognition of Israel for one. But it's also more importantly to create a regional anti-Iran alliance between the Israelis and the Gulf states, which kind of already exists, but to make it more concrete. And it's also, of course, financial. The Israelis have a financial interest to be able to have an economic relationship with various countries across the region. I mean, they already do with former normalizing countries like Egypt and Jordan, and they want that to expand because it's good for their economy to be able to, for example, sell weapons to the United Arab Emirates. Now, for the UAE and the Saudis, even though the Saudis haven't actually technically normalized with Israel yet, they're on the path to the UAE, however, has. And for these countries, you know, it's important for a number of reasons. And they don't like, first of all, they don't like the Palestinian cause, obviously. And more broadly, the UAE and the Saudis really view any Arab nationalism or sort of Pan-Arab or leftist project in the region as a threat to their own hegemony. So they promote this kind of narrow Saudi and Emirati nationalism, you know, to kind of like, you know, cancel out the Palestinian cause and other Arab nationalisms. And so to make, to make, to have a relationship with Israel to sort of shut down the Palestinian cause, behooves them in that respect. But it's also about like Israel having this sort of beneficial economic relationship with a very wealthy and powerful country to, like I mentioned, buy Israeli weapons or make money off of Israeli tourists, which is what the UAE is doing now. But again, it's also about maintaining this broader anti-Iran alliance. And then for Bahrain, you know, Bahrain's a poor country for the most part, and it needs investment. So that's part of it. But the Bahrainis also depend on the Saudis. They're practically like a Saudi colony. So in other words, you know, in short, all of these countries, the reason that they want to expand these Abraham Accords is they're doing it to maintain their existence and their hegemony over the region. And the Israeli relationship with the Gulf States really is natural in many ways, because at the end of the day, they're all clients of US imperialism. So they have similar interests, the primary one being to contain the region, their own regional power against the Iranians, which present, I think, you know, the biggest threat to US imperialism in the region. And if they're all client states and it presents a threat to them as well. And I just want to mention very briefly, you know, we don't think of countries outside of the Gulf States as being a part of these normalization schemes. However, the US has pushed for normalization on Israel's behalf in other countries as well. And one country that comes to mind is Morocco, which, you know, the US promised to recognize the Western Sahara, which is occupied as part of Morocco, in exchange for Morocco normalizing with Israel, which they did. And now they're trying to push this normalization scheme more secretly in Lebanon, where I'm based. You know, the US negotiating team that's been in Lebanon recently negotiating the maritime border demarcation lines between Israel and Lebanon, led by this guy, Amos Hojstein, who's actually not just American, he's also in Israel, he also is an Israeli citizen. They've been leading these negotiations, but recently they have been trying, the US has been trying to condition Lebanon, receiving Jordanian electricity and Egyptian gas, which is not related to the maritime border agreement. They've been trying to condition that electricity generation in Lebanon on Lebanon agreeing to a maritime deal that's actually favorable to the Israelis. And the disputed gas between the two countries would then be divided and administered and sold by the Americans, which is actually more than normalization. It's actually a partnership. So despite the fact that the Biden administration isn't necessarily taking the Abraham Accords and trying to expand them as openly as the Trump administration, they still are going around trying to use their power in the region to push countries into normalizing with the Israelis. The Abraham Accords were controversial as they marked a retreat by some Arab countries from their longstanding and stated position of refusing to recognize Israel until a resolution to the Palestinian cause. What are the factors that prompted these countries to abandon their commitment to the Palestinians? How have countries like Oman in Saudi Arabia, who are not formal signatories, but close to Israel nonetheless, responded to these developments? Well, you know, I think there's a few things going on here. I think that the role of the, for example, Palestinian authority, which is normalized tremendously with Israel and is basically acts as like a security arm of the Israelis in the West Bank, has led to these other countries to feel slightly more comfortable doing the normalizing more openly. But it's also just, you know, a determination that, you know, in the past, it was kind of the belief across the Middle East that even if a government didn't really care about the Palestinians, the people on the ground did. So it was actually not possible even for the most dictatorial governments to normalize with the Israelis without huge pushback from their own populations. But because of a lot of sectarianism and sort of the rise of more narrow and local nationalisms across the region and the split between the pro-Iran axis and the anti-Iran axis, it's become much easier for these various regimes across the Middle East to do this without that much pushback from their own populations who are sort of busy caring about other things. But, you know, you mentioned Oman. And I do want to note that while Qatar and Oman are not officially, you know, they haven't normalized with the Israelis, they didn't join the Abraham Accords, they are unofficially playing a role. Qatar and the Omanis, they like protected themselves from their greedy hegemonic Saudi neighbors in many respects and have managed to maintain good relations with Iran by offering, you know, useful services to the Americans and even Israelis like acting as back channels and doing things like, you know, the Qataris pay for the Hamas government and Gaza so that, you know, Gaza doesn't completely collapse. The Qataris also help with the Taliban. They also let the Americans have one of the most important bases in the region, no questions asked. And that kind of allows them to maintain this foreign policy independent of the Saudis or the Emiratis. But then they also be through that sort of like deal where they fund Hamas so that the Israelis don't have to worry about so much. There is sort of an unofficial kind of normalization process that has taken place there. So just because those countries might not officially join or haven't officially joined or don't have any future plans to officially join, they're still playing a regional role in normalizing Israel's existence, I guess, in the Middle East as a settler colonial state.