There is a particular kind of tragedy – quieter than war, slower than siege, but no less devastating – in watching a country dismantle, with its own hands, the very diplomatic architecture it spent decades painstakingly constructing, and it is this tragedy, more than any battlefield outcome, that will define Israel’s place in the 21st century long after the last shell has fallen on Gaza.

Israel, since its founding in 1948, has existed in a permanent state of diplomatic deficit, a nation born into regional hostility, sustained not by the consent of its neighbors but by the overwhelming fact of its military supremacy, and perpetually engaged in the exhausting, Sisyphean work of legitimation – the endless effort to convert raw power into something resembling acceptance.

For more than seven decades, that work proceeded unevenly, fitfully, sometimes cynically, but recognizably forward, and by the autumn of 2020, when the Abraham Accords were signed on the White House lawn, it appeared as though something genuinely new was emerging in the Middle East: not peace, exactly, and certainly not reconciliation, but a pragmatic willingness among certain Arab governments to set aside the Palestinian question – or at least to stop letting it veto every other strategic interest – and deal with Israel as the regional reality it had always been.

The accords represented the most significant diplomatic realignment in the Middle East since Camp David. The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan – each for its own strategic calculus – chose to normalize relations with Israel, breaking a decades-old Arab consensus that had conditioned recognition on Palestinian statehood.

They were, from the beginning, transactional arrangements driven by arms sales, intelligence sharing, and American inducements – government-to-government bargains struck over the heads of publics who were never consulted and who, in many cases, remained deeply hostile to the entire enterprise.

In Morocco, where normalization was anchored to Washington’s recognition of sovereignty over Western Sahara, polls consistently showed widespread opposition to diplomatic ties with Israel, and protests accompanied every high-profile handshake. No honest observer mistook these agreements for peace between peoples; they were, at best, peace between palaces, and the distinction mattered enormously, though Israel – drunk on the spectacle of its own flag flying in Arab capitals – chose not to notice.

And yet, something real was happening, something that even the skeptics had to acknowledge. Between 2020 and 2023, dozens of bilateral agreements were signed across defense, agriculture, technology, and tourism; Israeli visitors discovered Marrakech and Dubai; Moroccan universities established research partnerships with Israeli counterparts; defense........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)