The region has moved on

The story you were raised on says Israel is an island — hated by the entire region, surviving only on American money, waiting for the day the Arab world unites and finishes the job. That story died in September 2020, and most people who believe it still haven't heard the funeral was full of Arab dignitaries.

What actually happened. In the space of a few months, four Arab states signed full peace with Israel: the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in September 2020, then Morocco and Sudan. Not ceasefires, not "resistance" — open peace: embassies, direct flights, tourism, trade, security cooperation. The Abraham Accords, they were called. And the crowd that was supposed to riot instead queued at the check-in counters. Hebrew appeared on signage in Dubai's malls; kosher sections opened in its supermarkets; Israeli tourists — hundreds of thousands of them — discovered they could fly to the Gulf in three hours and be welcomed. Within two years, UAE-Israel bilateral trade was in the billions. The peace dividend wasn't a promise. It was a spreadsheet.

Why did they sign? This is where your version of the world breaks, so pay attention. The Arab states that made peace did not betray the Palestinian cause; they reordered their priorities. Three things happened. First, the threat map changed: Iran's nuclear program and its proxies — the same "resistance axis" that claims to fight for Palestine — looked to Gulf capitals like a bigger danger than Israel ever was. Second, Israel stopped being a liability and became an asset: water technology, agriculture, cyber, intelligence, a security partner against a shared enemy. Third, a generation of Gulf leaders and citizens grew up with no memory of 1948 and no emotional investment in a war their grandfathers fought; they wanted investment and jobs, not another generation of slogans. Be honest about the tradeoffs, because they were real: the deals were made by governments, not peoples; Morocco's normalization came wrapped in an American decision on Western Sahara; Sudan signed and then its government fell before the treaty was ratified. The Accords were not pure — no peace deal ever is. But they were peace, and the region's people began collecting it immediately.

The night the thesis died. In April 2024, Iran — having armed Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis for decades, having promised the destruction of Israel — launched its first direct attack: hundreds of drones and missiles aimed at Israeli cities. And the country that helped stop them, alongside American, British, and French forces, was Jordan — the Arab state with the largest Palestinian refugee population on earth. Amman said it was defending its own airspace, and it was. That's the point. When the "resistance axis" finally attacked, the Arab order — including the state Palestinians share the most history with — found itself on the other side of the missiles. The resistance promises to free Palestine from Israel. It cannot explain why Israel's neighbors, who know both sides up close, keep choosing Israel over the resistance.

Then came October 7 — the fire that didn't catch. Hamas's 2023 massacre was aimed, most analysts agree, at more than Israel: it was meant to torch the normalization process before its crown jewel — Saudi Arabia — could sign. For a while it worked: Saudi talks froze, Israel's new friendships went cold, and the world's attention snapped back to Palestine, exactly as Hamas intended. But watch what happened next. None of the four Abraham states broke off relations. Trade resumed. And Saudi Arabia — the prize — didn't return to 2019; it moved to a new position: normalization is on the table, and the price is now a credible path to a Palestinian state. Read that twice. The Saudis, of all governments, are now selling Palestinian statehood as part of a peace deal with Israel. The region's most powerful Arab state concluded that the way to give Palestinians something real runs through peace, not through the resistance. The only people October 7 made more powerful are the people who planned it.

Now run the ledger, honestly. Egypt made peace in 1979 and got the Sinai back — forty-six years of peace, an entire peninsula, returned in exchange for recognizing Israel. Jordan made peace in 1994 and got its border, its water, and thirty years of quiet. The UAE made peace in 2020 and got trade, technology, tourism, and a security partnership. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 — uprooted settlements, soldiers, the whole apparatus — and got a Hamas coup and rockets. Israel offered a state in 2000 and 2008 and got suicide bombings and silence. One column of that ledger is peace producing results for real people. The other column is "resistance" producing a permanent war economy, a destroyed Gaza, and a leadership that has never once delivered a state to the people it claims to free. You don't need to like Israel to read that ledger. You only need to be able to read.

Your leaders told you the Arab world would never accept Israel, so you should wait — and while you waited, the Arab world accepted Israel, and got on the train. The next chapter does something the resistance has never done: it answers your strongest arguments — apartheid, genocide, occupation — head-on, with sources, without dodging. Because if this project is going to change your mind, it owes you that much.