Reflections on the Abraham Accords via last year's government

The Abraham Accords suddenly exploded onto the world stage in 2020. Can they just as suddenly explode off it? Now, what has this got to do with this past year of the Bennett-Lapid coalition government in Israel? It is related, in a way, to how Bennett suddenly "exploded" into the Prime Minister's office and then just as suddenly that bomb detonated and he disappeared from the public eye. This is NOT about whether or not Bennett was wise to be part of the widest coalition this country has ever seen. And it is also NOT about the betrayal so many of his voters felt when he did so. This is about the opposition. Similarly, it is NOT about how left-wing ministers, who made it into the cabinet because of this extraordinary experiment (for better/for worse), ignored the coalition agreement by which parties would set aside their individual ideological goals for the greater goal of bringing order to domestic chaos, the chaos, for example of three years without a budget. We are putting all that aside as irrelevant to this particular discussion. Please go along with me on this, okay?

Because this is about the opposition.

As soon as the new, very unexpected, coalition government was signed in, the opposition decided to undermine it. Now, we remember that Smotrich prevented having Ra'am brought into a right-wing coalition when Bibi was flirting with the idea. So his continued fight against the cross-the-spectrum coalition that brought in Ra'am is consistent with his outlook. However, Bibi did consider bringing in Ra'am. That it did not come about does not change the fact that he was not opposed to doing so. The "why" is less important: was it because of Smotrich's objections or was it because Ra'am really did not want to be in the kind of coalition Bibi had to offer? This is irrelevant to the fact that Bibi was considering it and, therefore, when he railed against the coalition that did manage to pull it off and start running the nation, it looked more like a personal vendetta rather than a principled stand.   from article https://www.jewishpress.com/news/eye-on-palestine/palestinian-authority/next-meretz-chief-gal-on-reminds-lapid-he-promised-political-solution-with-abbas/2022/08/19/

Zehava Gal-On, the former and most likely future chairperson of Meretz, Israel’s barely surviving left-wing party, told Walla in an interview Thursday that PA Chairman’s comments in Berlin this week (Abbas in Berlin: Israel Committed 50 Holocausts) were despicable, but in the end, it’s in Israel’s interest to keep meeting with him. “We can be offended and disgusted but we have security interests,” Gal-On said.

  From: https://www.jns.org/opinion/could-a-muslim-senator-be-an-ardent-supporter-of-israel/?utm_source=The+Daily+Syndicate&utm_campaign=a5905f1b7a-Daily+Syndicate+08-14-22+%28copy+2%29_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8583953730-a5905f1b7a-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D&ct=t%28Daily+Syndicate+08-14-22+%28copy+2%29_COPY_01%29

If the Abraham Accords truly represent the future, we are going to need a lot more moderate Muslims like Oz who, whatever their political affiliations, are willing to stand with the Jewish community in support of Israel.