When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorized the strike on Hamas leaders meeting in Doha last week, he knew there would be fallout. Not only from Qatar, which has long hosted Hamas officials, but also from Israel’s Gulf partners who signed the Abraham Accords five years ago in the hope of forging a new model of regional cooperation.
Bahraini political analyst Ahmed Khuzaie, in Israel for three days to participate in a conference in Sderot organized by the Coalition for Regional Security to mark five years since the accords, warned that Israel risks eroding the trust that underpinned those agreements.
The Abraham Accords, he said in an interview, were not meant to be another “cold” treaty, similar to Israel’s arrangements with Egypt and Jordan. Rather, they were intended to be a “warm peace” founded on consultation, trust, and cooperation across a broad range of areas.
By acting without coordination, he argued, Israel was undermining the very spirit that made these accords unique.
Khuzaie recalled the optimism that greeted the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020 among those who long wanted to see signs of Arab-Israeli normalization.
“Everybody was hopeful,” he said. But five years later, that optimism has given way to doubt. Arab publics are skeptical, Gulf leaders are cautious, and the region faces crisis after crisis. What began as a bold step forward has become weighed down by mistrust and uncertainty.
Part of that mistrust, he argued, comes from Israel’s failure to treat the accords as a living partnership. The UAE and Bahrain assumed considerable political risk in signing, because the agreements were government decisions, not popular ones. What those governments expected in return was recognition of their sensitivities and a seat at the table when major Israeli decisions affecting the region were made.
That consultation, he said, did not happen before Israel’s strike in Doha. Instead, the Gulf was left to react after the fact, fueling the sense that Israel cannot be trusted to treat its new allies as genuine partners.
The immediate question, though, is how will Qatar respond?
Following the attack, officials in Doha promised retaliation. Khuzaie dismissed the likelihood of a military reaction.
“The region cannot tolerate another escalation,” he said. “It will just erupt into a big war. And I don’t think the Gulf states are looking to have a war at this moment.”
Instead, he expects Qatar to act politically in ways that may be less visible but still consequential.
“Just a few weeks back, we heard from the Israeli media that Qatari money was involved in Israeli politics,” he said. “So, there we go.”
The implication was clear: Qatar might retaliate not with missiles but with influence, using the levers of politics and diplomacy to complicate Israel’s position from within. In other words, “Qatargate” – the Qatari influence-peddling scheme currently under investigation that allegedly crept into the Prime Minister’s Office – may have just been an appetizer.
That warning feeds into a broader critique Khuzaie has of Israel’s approach to mediation. In his view, it was a mistake to allow Qatar to play a role with Hamas after the October 7 massacre. Mediation, he insisted, should have been reserved for the signatories of the Abraham Accords themselves.
“The Emirates and Bahrain signed the Abraham Accords. Why do we need Qatar to mediate while we have an amazing, exclusive club? Why let Qatar do it? Why not the Emirates?” he asked.
Even though the UAE banned the Muslim Brotherhood, he was confident they would have found a way. To his mind, anyone wishing to mediate should have been required to first “join the club.”
For him, the accords were meant to be more than a treaty on paper – they were supposed to set the terms for how the region conducts itself. Allowing Qatar in from the outside blurred those lines, he said. Then Israel’s strike in Doha pushed the Gulf into a defensive crouch.
“Qatar took some stances that the rest of the Gulf states didn’t like. But when any harm happens to any one of them, it basically brings everybody closer,” he said, citing UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed’s quick visit to Doha as proof of that solidarity.
The timing of the Qatar strike makes Abraham Accords ties fraught
The timing of the strike made it even more fraught. Just a week earlier, the UAE had warned that Israeli annexation of parts of Judea and Samaria in response to expected recognition of a Palestinian state by Western democracies would jeopardize the accords.
That, Khuzaie suggested, should have been a moment to try to salvage the agreements, not make matters worse. Instead, Israel chose a course that made an already fragile situation with its Gulf partners even more complicated by striking in Doha.
Some in Israel have argued that the accords are less critical now for the UAE and Bahrain because the 12-day war with Iran weakened the Islamic Republic, reducing their reliance on Israel to counter Tehran.
While Iran has been weakened, he said, it is not weak. Tehran still has proxies – the Houthis in Yemen, sleeper cells in Bahrain, networks elsewhere in the Gulf – that continue to threaten stability. Asked whether the Iranian threat remains the glue that holds the accords together, he agreed that for the Gulf, the danger from Tehran is still very real, and that any suggestion otherwise is misplaced.
One widespread belief repeated in Israel since the attack in Doha and the furious response by the Arab world, including the Gulf states, is that while the Arab governments are excoriating Israel publicly, in their hearts, they are celebrating the weakening of Hamas, that Qatar was taken down a peg, and that overall, the changes in the Middle East that have taken place since October 7, 2023, are beneficial for Bahrain, the UAE, and other key actors in the region.
Khuzaie acknowledged there was some truth to that perception, saying public condemnations are often part of the diplomatic process, while behind closed doors, the positions can look very different.
If Netanyahu were to ask for his advice, Khuzaie said, it would be simple: Israel should treat the accords as a genuine partnership – recognizing the political risks the UAE and Bahrain took in signing – rather than act unilaterally in ways that erode trust.
As to whether he believed the accords would survive the current crisis, the Bahrani analyst avoided extremes. He said he was neither pessimistic nor optimistic, only “hopeful.”
And when pressed on if there was anything concrete out there that gave him this hope, he answered bluntly: “No. Faith, just faith.”