September 14, 2025
This piece originally appeared in The Times of Israel.
The Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023, was not only a brutal physical assault on Israel, it was also an attack against the vision of a more integrated, peaceful, and prosperous Middle East decades in the making. Hamas’ terrorism was designed to not only murder, torture, and kidnap Israelis but also to destroy long-sought Saudi-Israeli normalization, as well as broader Arab-Israeli reconciliation and Israel’s further integration into the region. The terrorists aimed to drag the region back into the zero-sum mindset of the past, where hostility to Israel was the default posture and cooperation was unimaginable.
The surest way to defeat that terrorist ideology is to double down on the Abraham Accords.
Since the signing of the Accords five years ago, I have dined on kosher food in the United Arab Emirates and visited the Abrahamic Family House – a stunning complex featuring a mosque, church, and synagogue side by side. Such things were unthinkable before the Accords. When I visited the Emirates as a Member of Congress, I gathered with the small Jewish community in the UAE to quietly discuss their challenges. Today, Jewish life is visible, public, and respected. We must not lose sight of this progress and what is possible across the region.
Of course, the Accords did not materialize overnight – for years, we witnessed glimmers of change. As then-Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East, I met with diplomats from across the Gulf who were hungry for something different: cooperation, openness, a better tomorrow. I still clearly remember receiving the call from an official in the Trump Administration to tell me that something historic was about to be announced.
Only weeks later, in September 2020, I was on the White House lawn for the signing of the Abraham Accords in the midst of the COVID pandemic. I felt something rare in that dark time: hope. These agreements were seismic. They laid the foundation for a new era of regional cooperation, greater stability in the Gulf, and the chance for young people across the Middle East to inherit a future defined by prosperity rather than by perpetual conflict.
That future is still within reach, but only if we refuse to allow Hamas terrorists and other extremists to block its path. We simply cannot allow the momentum of the Abraham Accords to stall.
We acknowledge the current reality. War has consumed Israel and Gaza for more than 700 days. Forty eight hostages are still held by Hamas. Israeli and Palestinian families continue to grieve loved ones lost in the war Hamas started and refuses to end. Yet giving up, or even putting on hold the prospects for a better future, would be a betrayal of the very dream of peace the world has spent decades envisioning.
Despite the efforts of Hamas and the Iranian regime, we continue to see the tangible successes of the Abraham Accords. Security cooperation against common threats—especially Iran and its terror proxies —has strengthened. Trade and investment between Israel and its Arab partners have grown. Tech advancements and collaboration are flourishing across water, health, and energy.
The best response to the horrific Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, is not to abandon the vision of a more integrated, peaceful, and prosperous Middle East; it’s the exact opposite: more diplomacy, more partnerships, more normalization. It’s to choose prosperity over strife, to choose the architecture of peace over the blueprint for more hatred and division. It is to recognize that the Jewish and democratic state of Israel is not only here to stay; it is central to the success of the entire region.
The ultimate defeat of Hamas will not come on the battlefield alone. It will come when its twisted, genocidal ideology is rendered irrelevant, when the Middle East has been transformed into a region where peace with Israel is expected and irreversible.
American leadership brought us all to the White House lawn five years ago. Today, with the continued leadership of the Trump Administration and the support of Congress, we have the opportunity and the obligation to support and build a larger and bolder coalition to counter the terror-driven death and destruction that has long imperiled the region. The Abraham Accords have thus far survived Iran’s effort to destroy them – on this five-year anniversary, it’s time to strengthen and expand them.
