On December 14, 2023, the U.S. Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act, which included an interesting provision: for the U.S. President to create a special envoy for the Abraham Accords, the Negev Forum, and other related platforms. This addition came at the same time as the government worried deeply about the collapse of its entire agenda in the Middle East, as well as about the threats posed to Israel from Lebanon and Yemen.

Until a few months ago, high officials of the United States preened about their political maneuvers to get the Arab states to normalize relations with Israel and to dilute the influence of China in the region. All these schemes collapsed in the ruins of Israel’s aggressive bombing campaign against the Palestinians in Gaza. Now, all of the structures created by the United States—starting with the Abraham Accords—appear to have lost their solidity. Whereas the question of Palestine had begun to drift off the radar of the Arab states, that question is now forced back to the center by the actions of Hamas and the other Palestinian armed factions on October 7.

U.S. President Donald Trump was never interested in international law or the intricacies of diplomacy. As far as Israel was concerned, Trump was clear that he wanted to settle the conflict with the Palestinians—who seemed weakened by the Israeli policy of settlements and isolation of Gaza—to the benefit of Tel Aviv. In January 2020, Trump released his “Peace to Prosperity” plan, which effectively disregarded the claims of the Palestinians and strengthened the apartheid Israeli state. The emblem of this hardened policy was that Trump was going to shift the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a provocative move that upended the Palestinian claim that the city was to be central to their state. “I have done a lot for Israel,” Trump saidat a January........

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