Ambassador Nides: We’re Making Abraham Accords a ‘Real Operation’

By Zalman Ahnsaf

YERUSHALAYIM — With the UAE’s foreign minister visiting Israel to mark the second anniversary of the Abraham Accords, the Biden administration has been trumpeting its commitment to normalization between Israel and Arab nations.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides gives the Trump administration credit for a diplomatic achievement in establishing relations between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco, but also gives credit to the Biden White House for taking it from there.

“With the former administration, [the Abraham Accords] was a start-up. Our job is to take it from a start-up to a real operation,” Nides was quoted as saying by The Times of Israel on Thursday.

Nides cited several strides since Biden took office, including March’s Negev Summit, which was organized by Israel with Washington’s help, that brought together the foreign ministers of Israel, the U.S., the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco, who established various working groups to promote regional cooperation on security, education, health, energy, tourism, food and water.

He also touted the administration’s recent $100 million dollar donation to the East Jerusalem Hospital Network, which was matched by several other Gulf countries, something that might not have been possible before the Accords.

The American envoy’s remarks come after Jared Kushner, formerly senior adviser to then-President Donald Trump, earlier this week spoke of his “disappointment” over the loss of momentum. Kushner said that when former Trump left office, the U.S. was engaged in talks with six additional countries who were candidates for joining the Accords, but no countries have joined since President Joe Biden took office.

Kushner also said that Trump administration policies changed the Mideast picture in other important ways: When he came into office, ISIS had a caliphate the size of Ohio; Iran was being provided with $150 billion through the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action to fund its terrorist activities in the region; Syria was still in a civil war; and Libya and Yemen were unstable.

While Nides would not respond directly to Kushner’s criticism, he maintained that there are “lots of conversations going on with lots of countries simultaneously” about joining the Accords.

“Yes, we want to add more countries. We’re working with a bunch of countries,” Nides said. “But these are complicated, long conversations, and we have a lot of balls in the air.”

On Wednesday, a State Department official who spoke with Jewish Insider on condition of anonymity, rejected Kushner’s contention that the Biden administration has been inactive with regard to the Abraham Accords because of its aversion to engaging in anything associated with Trump, or “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

“This administration has been a strong supporter of the Abraham Accords from day one,” the official said. “Our focus has been on the substance of efforts to expand peace and normalization agreements between Israel and Arab and Muslim-majority countries, and we’re going to continue to work on that. I can tell you personally, I’m working very, very hard on that with the full backing of the secretary of state and the president.”