Trump 2.0 and the Abraham Accord revival opportunity
“All hell will break out. If those hostages aren’t back, I don’t want to hurt your negotiation, if they’re not back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East,” Donald Trump told reporters at a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, Florida, on January 7, 2025.
Trump’s statement gave a clear signal that United States under his leadership would return to the model of US-Israel relations in 2017-2020, during Donald Trump’s first term.
Donald Trump is predicted to try as hard as possible to continue the geopolitical ambitions contained in the Abraham Accord which has succeeded in normalizing diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Sudan, without any concessions to Palestine
And this will have a great chance of being realized, considering that Trump’s second term or Trump 2.0 also meets the national leadership in Israel which is no different from Donald Trump’s first term in power, namely Benjamin Netanyahu, to be precise Netanyahu 4.0. As witnessed four years ago, the two tended to be symmetrical on many things and issues.
In other words, first, under Donald Trump’s leadership, US has a great chance of considering that the two-state solution is no longer a relevant solution to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This means that Donald Trump and Netanyahu will most likely no longer make the two-state solution a diplomatic offer to other Middle Eastern countries to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel.
Trump will try to pressure several countries in the Middle East, with various forms of concessions or a combination of concessions and threats, to immediately open diplomatic talks with Israel as a first step to normalizing diplomatic relations. As has been witnessed, Trump did something similar to Sudan in 2020, after the Abraham Accord was successfully signed by Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi.
Second, Trump and Netanyahu are predicted to both negate and delegitimize the existence of Hamas and anything related to Hamas on the global stage. Both parties will increasingly promote Hamas as a terrorist organization that must be eradicated on the one hand and delegitimized by other countries in the Middle East on the other.
The same thing is also likely to be experienced by organizations such as Hezbollah. Moreover, Iran as the main supporter and donor of Hamas and Hezbollah has been seen to be increasingly weakened, as well as Russia, which is also indirectly considered to be behind Iran.
The result is that Israel’s attacks on Hamas, which have been very massive in the past year, will potentially not continue or at least not be more massive as before, as long as negotiations between the two parties can proceed as desired by US and Israel, especially regarding negotiations for the release of Israelis who have been held hostage by Hamas. This has the potential to happen, as long as the White House succeeds in conducting bilateral negotiations with sponsor countries or those categorized as providing support to Hamas so far.
Third, Donald Trump will again approach Muhammad Bin Salman (MBS) to smooth these plans. As happened in the first era of Donald Trump, Saudi is a strategic partner of his administration. The relationship between the two countries is running very smoothly and romantically, as is the personal relationship between the two, Trump and MBS. Also, don’t forget, the personal relationship between MBS and Netanyahu is also quite good.
The good relationship began to fall apart after Joe Biden entered the White House in 2021, since the Biden administration turned out to question the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi which was rumored to involve people close to MBS. As a result, Washington’s policy finally made Riyad turn drastically to Moscow, China, and Iran. However, this still did not immediately make MBS also turn openly to support Hamas, as Hamas had hoped.
So it will be quite easy for Trump to embrace MBS again, then bring him back to the long path of implementing the Abraham Accord, especially reopening initial talks on the normalization plan of other Arab countries under Saudi Arabia’s influence with Israel, although not for Saudi Arabia itself.
Fourth, Donald Trump will try to approach Erdogan to tame Syria so that it does not become a threat to Israel. Syria during the Bashar Al Assad era had been a supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah. Well, after the collapse of the Assad regime some time ago, Syria under Abu Mumahad Jawlani seems to be no longer one of the sponsors of Hezbollah and Hamas. Iran is also expected to have difficulty providing support to Hezbollah and Hamas, because Damascus is no longer Tehran’s proxy.
Indeed, the opportunity to bring the new government in Damascus closer to Israel is not easy, because Turkey will certainly choose to be neutral and try not to be too frontal towards Iran and Russia. But at least, Trump will try to make Damascus not dangerous for Tel Aviv.
More or less, the picture of the relationship between Syria and Israel that Trump hopes for in the future will be like the relationship between Ankara and Tel Aviv. It seems tough, but not dangerous and can be controlled enough through diplomacy. The concession for Damascus will certainly be in the form of reducing the presence of American troops in Syria, with light agreements related to guaranteeing the existence of the Kurds in Syria.
And fifth, Trump will approach Putin to support his ambitions in the Middle East, with concessions to reduce US support in Ukraine. Trump will have the potential to lead Kiev to recognize Russian sovereignty in several areas in Eastern Ukraine that have been occupied by Russia, so that the tension of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia on the one hand and the West and Russia on the other hand can be reduced.
The concession is that Trump seems to be asking Putin to support theAbu Muhamad Jawlani’s administration in Damascus which is backed by Ankara, with the guarantee that Damascus will continue to provide access to Russia to provide assistance to Moscow’s proxies in Libya. Then ask Putin to approach Iran to do the same on the one hand and reduce the tension of confrontation with Israel through Hamas and Hezbollah on the other.
To realize this, it seems that this time Trump will soften on the Iranian nuclear issue. Trump has the potential to open up opportunities for the continuation of talks on Iran’s nuclear (Iran Nuclear Deal) which he canceled in 2017. Moreover, this path has been quite open in recent years because the Biden administration has succeeded in reaching several points of agreement with Tehran which finally resulted in the unblocking of Iranian government assets in US some time ago.
Well, as Trump’s foreign policy platform in his first term, all projections of US’s strategic policies in the Middle East will be carried out by the White House through bilateral channels, aka outside existing multilateral organizations. All parties involved in creating peace in the Middle East according to Donald Trump will be approached individually, with diplomatic weapons in the form of a combination of promises of financial aid, guarantees of protection, arms sales and threats.
Even so, Trump is also expected to try not to cause a war in the Middle East. Indeed, during the four years of his first term, there was no war involving US, either directly or indirectly. Something similar will be very likely to happen again, especially in the Middle East. Because Trump will try to weaken Israel’s opponents in the Middle East through diplomatic-bilateral channels.
So even though Trump’s statement about Hamas at the beginning of this article seemed very antagonistic and frontal, Trump’s potential to start a new war in the Middle East is quite small, exactly like Trump’s statements about Kim Jong Un some time before their meeting in 2020. In other words, Trump will try to weaken and delegitimize Hamas and Hezbollah without weapons on the one hand and approach Iran and Syria through Moscow and Ankara on the other. To be clearer, let’s wait.