Israel's Negev Summit Consolidated a Reactionary Axis in the Middle East

Published April 5, 2022
in Democracy In Exile

The so-called Negev Summit hosted by Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid last week, attended by the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt and Morocco, along with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, signified Israel's full partnership in a consolidated axis of reactionary powers in the Middle East. This is the fruit of the 2020 Abraham Accords, in which the UAE and Bahrain, and subsequently Morocco and Sudan, normalized their relations with Israel. While currently focused on Iran, this "axis of reaction" has opposed popular demands for democracy and social justice and reinforced autocracy across the entire Middle East and North Africa.

Conspicuously absent from the confab in Israel's southern desert—the Negev, or Naqab in Arabic—were the Saudis and Jordanians. But according to Henrique Cymerman, an Israeli journalist and the president of the Israel-Gulf Cooperation Council Chamber of Commerce, "The Saudis were the real enablers of the meeting."