The White House is now dismissing President Trump’s Abraham Accords between Arab states and Israel — after candidate Joseph R. Biden in 2020 effusively praised the deals and took credit for laying the diplomatic groundwork.
The normalization pacts between Israel and a number of Arab states were at the heart of the Trump administration’s Middle East strategy, easing Israel’s economic and diplomatic isolation and building up a regional coalition of allies to confront Iran and its proxies.
Asked by a reporter last week specifically about the status of Mr. Trump’s accords, Jen Psaki, President Biden’s press secretary, responded: “Aside from putting forward a peace proposal that was dead on arrival, we don’t think they did anything constructive, really, to bring an end to the longstanding conflict in the Middle East.”
The recent 11-day war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip has put the region on edge once again. Over the weekend, Hamas terror leader Ismail Haniyeh declared victory after Hamas fired over 4,000 missiles into Israel and the Jewish state’s retaliated with airstrikes. Mr. Haniyeh said Hamas had met its objective in the fighting and “destroyed the project of coexistence,” according to news reports, in a reference to the Abraham Accords.
The Trump administration’s point man, the president’s son-in-law and White House adviser Jared Kushner, brought a new approach to the Middle East. Instead of waiting for Palestinians to recognize Israel — a prospect that has lingered unfulfilled for decades — the Trump team decoupled those talks from brokering individual deals between Israel and Arab states.
The first was a precedent-shattering agreement, dubbed the Abraham Accords, announced in August 2020 between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel, culminating in a White House signing ceremony the next month.
Mr. Biden as a candidate for president last year enthusiastically supported the agreement as a critical step, injected himself into how it came about and said he would build on it.
