Prophetic Perspectives: Peace in the Middle East?
I want to talk with you for just a moment about the Abraham Accord. This is the so-called peace agreement between Israel and two Middle East states known as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
First of all, I want to point out the Abraham Accord is not a peace agreement. Israel has never been at war with either one of these two states, so therefore, technically the accord should be considered a normalization agreement. What this amounts to is if these states would recognize the legitimate existence of Israel then Israel would gain complete relations with them such as trade relations, tourist relations, and also opening Israel to trading technology with these two states. So, the significance of the Abraham Accord I think has been greatly overblown. It does not guarantee peace in the Middle East.
And, we are talking about only two Arab states and they are very, very tiny states. For example, the United Arab Emirates has a population of 9.2 million, but only 1.4 million Arabs. All of the rest of the people living there are from other countries who have been brought in to work for the rich Arabs of that country. So, the UAE only has a small native population of 1.4 million people.
The nation of Bahrain consists of a tiny little island whose population is 1.2 million, of which 600,000 are people brought in to work. So, between these two nations, they only have 2 million Arabs out of the 450 million Arabs living across the entire Middle East.
Furthermore, these two tiny nations do not have a common border with Israel. They are no threat to Israel and they never have been. These normalization agreements mean very little towards establishing comprehensive peace in the Middle East.
The sworn enemies of Israel are not involved in these agreements, and prophetically they will not be involved in future agreements. The sworn enemies of Israel are Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, and the non-Arab states of Turkey and Iran. Behind them, of course, is lurking Russia, which is giving support to all of Israel’s enemies.
Reasons For Expanding The Accord
Why could the Abraham Accord soon include other states such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia? One reason is their total exasperation with the Palestinians. The Palestinians have had opportunity after opportunity to establish a Palestinian state, and every time they have rejected the offers. It’s just been a never-ending, “No! No! No! No!” The reason for this is the Palestinian leaders want the utter annihilation of Israel and they do not truly want a two-state solution.
The second reason is the fear of Iran. Iran is trying to dominate the Middle East. The Arab nations are scared to death of Iran, so they want the backing of the United States and Israel.
A third reason involves Arab access to advanced Israeli technology.
Trump’s Strategy
The reason for why the Abraham Accord has succeeded is that President Trump did something that no other president has ever done. Every other president, including Ronald Reagan, has always approached the Middle East by trying to put pressure on Israel to make concessions, which Israel has often done, to no avail. They have never really tried to force the Palestinians to make concessions because they know the Palestinians are never going to make any concessions. So, peace has always been about putting pressure on Israel. What President Trump did differently was he completely ignored the Palestinians, went around them, and talked directly with the Arab states.
So, what’s happening with these Arab states now is a normalization of their relations with Israel and completely isolating the Palestinians. This, incidentally, will probably do nothing more than enrage the Palestinians, enrage their allies, and cause an even more of an unsettled situation in the Middle East instead of actually bringing peace to the Middle East.
We need to pray that President Trump will never make the mistake of trying to endorse a two-state solution and divide Israel’s land because that is not in accordance with God’s will. God has not spent the last 100 years bringing the Jewish people back to the land of Israel for them to suddenly give away a portion of their land. That land belongs to the Jewish people! It was given to them for eternity by Almighty God. Joel 3:2 proclaims that God will enter into judgment against any nation in the end times that try to divide up His land. And, that includes the United States of America.
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