Israel Trump's envoy Witkoff: turning point reached in the Middle East
The new US administration wants to use the ceasefire in the Gaza war to promote the normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab states in the Middle East. If this succeeds, it would be a huge step forward for Israel and the entire region, Steve Witkoff, the Middle East envoy of the new US President Donald Trump, told Fox News.
23.01.2025, 05:04
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Qatar and Egypt had already been very successful as mediators in the negotiations with Hamas on a Gaza agreement, and now other countries could follow suit. "I think you could get everyone in this region on board," Witkoff said. "This is a turning point."
Normalization is "an incredible opportunity for the region" and "the beginning of the end of the war" - which in turn means that investments would become possible because banks would no longer have to hedge against war risks. According to Witkoff, the prerequisite for all of this was initially a ceasefire, as has been in place between Israel and Hamas since Sunday.
Extension of the historic Abraham Accords?
As the only Jewish state surrounded by Islamic countries, Israel was isolated in the Middle East for decades and only maintained a "cold peace" with Egypt and Jordan. During Trump's first term in office in 2020, the US mediated a historic normalization of relations with four other Arab states: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.
The so-called Abraham Accords broke with the decades-old principle that Israel's conflict with the Palestinians must be resolved before any rapprochement with Israel. Many Muslims therefore regarded the rapprochement with Israel as a betrayal. This is probably also why the rapprochement was officially sold primarily as an economic success, although the Gulf states and Israel also share a common enemy, Iran.
At the end of September 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu then announced that Israel was "on the threshold" of a "historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia" - the political heavyweight in the Gulf. This would "create a new Middle East", Netanyahu told the United Nations General Assembly in New York at the time.
Two weeks later, terrorists from Hamas and other groups then attacked southern Israel - and triggered the Gaza War with the massacre on October 7, 2023. It is assumed that Hamas wanted to prevent the nascent rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia with this unprecedented attack. As a result of the renewed Middle East conflict, the normalization process came to a standstill.
