What drove the Arab states and Israel to enter the Abraham Accords? What do the agreements mean for the Middle East? Please join us for a book talk with Dr. Elham Fakhro (HLS LLM ’10) discussing her groundbreaking book on the Abraham Accords.
Event overview
In August 2020, Donald Trump announced that his administration had brokered a groundbreaking treaty between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, the first normalization agreement between Israel and an Arab state in more than twenty years. Soon afterward, Bahrain joined the agreements, known as the Abraham Accords. How were these treaties achieved, and why did the parties involved see normalization as in their interest? In what ways have the accords altered the Middle East’s political landscape, and how have they affected the question of Palestine?
This book is a groundbreaking in-depth analysis of the Abraham Accords, shedding new light on their causes and consequences. Elham Fakhro demonstrates how shared security concerns, economic interests, and regional political shockwaves led to a surprising strategic convergence between the Gulf states and Israel, setting the stage for covert relations to come out into the open. She examines the role of the Trump administration in negotiating the agreements and shows how the UAE and Bahrain have instrumentalized the accords to burnish their reputations in Western capitals. Fakhro underscores how Washington’s Middle East policy shifted toward expanding the agreements at the expense of attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—with profound costs. Offering a critical lens on a much-hailed agreement, this book argues that the pursuit of normalization in isolation from a lasting solution to the conflict has entrenched the conditions that continually plunge the Middle East into crisis.
Elham Fakhro (HLS LLM ’10) is a Research Fellow at the Middle East Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School. She previously acted as Senior Analyst with the International Crisis Group and held teaching and research roles at NYU Abu Dhabi and Exeter University. She holds an LLM from Harvard Law School and DPhil from St Antony’s College, Oxford University. Elham is the author of the book on the Abraham Accords, out with Columbia University Press in November 2024.
Lunch will be provided.
This event is sponsored by the Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World, the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, HLS Advocates for Human Rights, and the Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association.