Amb. Friedman to Newsmax: This Is 'Not the America That Makes Abraham Accords' Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman speaks during a Republican Jewish Coalition event with Mehmet Oz, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, on Aug. 17. (Matt Rourke/AP)
By Nicole Wells | Thursday, 15 September 2022 08:04 PM EDT
Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman told Newsmax on Thursday that America under the Biden administration is "not the America that makes Abraham Accords," referring to the historic peace agreements the Trump administration brokered between Israel and several Arab nations.
"You have Israel, you have a Muslim country and you have America at the apex of the triangle," Friedman explained during an appearance on Newsmax's "The Record with Greta Van Susteren." "And in every one of these cases you have an America that is strong, that is projecting its power, its strength, its values in a way that gives these countries the comfort so they can move out of their zone and really engage.
"It requires America at the apex of the triangle, being strong," he continued. "[It] wasn't strong in Afghanistan, it's not strong now in Ukraine, it wasn't chasing Iran begging for a deal that will place great risk on all of our allies. That's not the America that makes Abraham Accords."
On September 15, 2020, then-President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and foreign ministers from the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Bahrain signed the official documents decreeing the normalization of relations among the nations.
"[It was the] first time Israel and two Arab nations made peace in 25 years," Friedman said. "We quickly got two more done before we finished and I think we really made a huge dent in ending the Arab-Israeli conflict."
Morocco signed on to the accords in December 2020 and Sudan in January 2021, according to published reports.
"It's a different America under the Trump administration," Friedman said. "Think back to 2011, what America did to what was a great friend of America, Hosni Mubarak, when he was the president of Egypt.
"He runs into some domestic difficulty [and] Obama just let him hang in the wind. He was replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt almost blew up and almost ended the treaty with Israel until the military came back and ended it.
"But that's the America that the Muslim countries currently are looking at," he continued. "They're looking at Biden and Obama, that kind of philosophy, which doesn't give many comfort."
Friedman added that the U.S. has not expanded the Abraham Accords to include more countries in two years.
"We were talking to six or seven countries when we left office; we could have gotten at least two or three more by now, maybe more," he said.
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