Widespread regional anger over Israel’s war on Gaza, and beyond, will likely prove a major obstacle to any further signatories to the accords.
Published On 17 Oct 2025
United States President Donald Trump has said he expects an expansion of the Abraham Accords soon and hopes Saudi Arabia will join the pact that normalised diplomatic relations between Israel and some Arab states, one week into the all-encompassing and fragile Gaza ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
“I hope to see Saudi Arabia go in, and I hope to see others go in. I think when Saudi Arabia goes in, everybody goes in,” Trump said in an interview broadcast Friday on Fox Business Network.
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The US president called the pact a “miracle” and “amazing” and hailed the United Arab Emirates’s signing of it.
The “Abraham Accords” secured agreements between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan.
“It’ll help bring long-lasting peace to the Middle East,” Trump claimed with his signature bombast.
But there are several factors at play since the original iteration of the accords, signed with fanfare at the White House during Trump’s first term as president in 2020.
Israel has carried out a two-year genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza, escalated its harsh assault on the occupied West Bank, and beyond Palestine, bombed six countries in the region this year, including key Gulf Arab mediator Qatar, the huge diplomatic fallout from which effectively helped Trump force Israel into a ceasefire in Gaza.
An emergency summit of Arab and Muslim countries held in Doha in September, in the wake of the attack, staunchly declared its solidarity with Qatar and condemned Israel’s bombing of the Qatari capital.
The extraordinary joint session between the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) gathered nearly 60 member states. Leaders said the meeting marked a critical moment to deliver a united message following what they described as an unprecedented escalation by Israel.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vision of a “Greater Israel”, has also been roundly condemned by Arab and Muslim countries, and involves hegemonic designs on Lebanese and Syrian territory, among others. Syrian President al-Sharaa, while welcoming Washington’s moves to end its international isolation, has not been warm to the idea of signing up to the Abraham Accords.
Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Naim Qassem appealed to Saudi Arabia in recent weeks to mend relations with the Lebanese armed group, aligned with Iran, and build a common front against Israel.
An August survey from the Washington Institute, a pro-Israel think tank in the US, found that 81 percent of Saudi respondents viewed the prospect of normalising relations with Israel negatively.
A Foreign Affairs and Arab Barometer poll from June came to similar findings: in Morocco, one of the Abraham Accords signatories, support for the deal fell from 31 percent in 2022 to 13 percent in the months after Israel’s war on Gaza began in October 2023.
Saudi Arabia has also repeatedly asserted its commitment to the Arab Peace Initiative, which conditions recognition of Israel on resolving the plight of Palestinians and establishing a Palestinian state.