After Gaza: The Collapse of Arab Normalisation and the New Middle East Cold War Samvada World

The Gaza war that broke out in October 2023 changed this view by revealing the weakness of top-down normalisation while reviving traditional regional antagonisms.
The most significant geopolitical outcome of the war in Gaza was the revival of the “Axis of Resistance” under Iranian leadership, with surprising coordination with Turkey.
American power in the Middle East has been further undermined in the aftermath of Gaza, accelerating regional diversification toward China, Russia, and other actors.
The collapse of Arab-Israeli normalisation and the onset of a new Middle East Cold War reflect not passing obstacles but a deeper reshaping of regional relations.

The 2020 Abraham Accords were a game-changer in the geopolitics of the Middle East. It was the first time Arab states normalised relations with the state of Israel without resolving the Palestinian issue at the time, appearing to disregard a long-standing prerequisite of regional peace. The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan normalised relations with Israel, with Saudi Arabia eagerly waiting to be the new member. The regional normalisation wave initiated a new approach to economic relations, enticing a technological coalition and a common regional front against Iran. However, the Gaza war that broke out in October 2023 changed this view by revealing the weakness of top-down normalisation while reviving traditional regional antagonisms. Rather than the integrated Middle East Abraham Accords had promised, there now exists a new Cold War with competing axes, weakened U.S. influence, and greater Iran-Turkey coordination.

The Normalisation Pause: When Public Opinion Met Realpolitik

The Gaza war put Arab countries in a sensitive position between national interests and public opinion. Despite the genuine benefits to normalising ties with Israel—technology and security to economic cooperation—the Gaza humanitarian crisis meant that normalising ties with Israel remained politically risky. Saudi Arabia itself, for example, was on the verge of striking its own normalisation agreement with Israel in an American-brokered framework before it suspended talks. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman declared openly that any agreement would need a serious trajectory toward Palestinian statehood, in effect reaffirming a condition the Abraham Accords effort had tiptoed around.

Conversely, the UAE and Bahrain restricted public contact with Israel, while maintaining diplomatic relations. Trade missions were delayed and assigned, cultural activities came to a standstill, and the official language used in public messaging was designed to emphasise this distance. While perhaps not an outright turnaround, the lack of public engagement was noteworthy and a reflection of a calculated decision in the face of domestic and regional imperatives. Street protests erupted in Arab capitals from Rabat to Manama, again illustrating a disjuncture: while the governments may have been fumbling towards Israel, their citizens remained adamantly pro-Palestinian. The drive toward normal relations was elite, and the Gaza war exposed the chasm between the palace and the street.

Morocco and Sudan, the more recent signers of the Abraham Accords, were in especially weak positions. Both normalised ties in part to secure U.S. ratification of disputed assertions of jurisdiction over territory and, in the case of Sudan, to take their name off a list of terrorist nations. They also received domestic backlash as the crisis deepened in Gaza, and opposition movements in Morocco and civil society in Sudan urged the normalisation to be reversed. Although both states did not “pull out” of the accords officially, in effect, the accords de facto fell apart, and the agreements remain as diplomatic agreements and not with any substance.

The Return of the Resistance Axis: Iran and Turkey Coordinate

It might be the case that the most significant geopolitical outcome of the war in Gaza was the revival of the “Axis of Resistance”, under Iranian leadership, and surprising coordination with Turkey. Iran has cultivated a proxy military network throughout the region for many years (Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iranian Shia militia groups in Iraq and Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza and the West Bank), and the war in Gaza galvanized the entire proxy network in ways that perhaps had never been conceived possible, coordinating actions against Israeli and U.S. interests across many fronts. The multi-theatre operation is significant in all aspects, and it demonstrates the strategic depth of Iran’s threat influence in the region, as well as possibly projecting pressure on its opposition without direct engagement.

Turkey’s engagement may be complicated, but it is also important. Since President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan assumed office, Ankara has pledged to be a proponent of the Palestinian cause, offering rhetorical support around humanitarian aid and creating a parallel set of commercial relations with Israel. The Gaza war provided an opportunity for Turkey to re-establish its role as a regional leader through Islamic summits, humanitarian corridors, and positioning itself as the ossified voice of Sunni identity with the Palestinians. This places Turkey in a de facto coordination with Iran, despite their competition in Syria and Libya, having established strategic coordination that creates complications for Western and Arab Gulf policies.

While the Iran-Turkey reconciliation is limited, it is exceedingly troubling for the Gulf states and Israel. The Sunni-Shia divide that has previously constrained forces opposed to normalisation is bypassed by doing so and homing in on a geographically contiguous bloc from Tehran via Baghdad and Damascus to Beirut and Ankara. This bloc can service its coordination of tactics without formal alliances; the people in this axis only need a common opposition to normalisation – and US-Israeli objectives in the region to develop sufficient “glue” for the coordination process.

Saudi Hesitation and the Future of Gulf Leadership

Saudi Arabia’s hesitation at normalisation conceals deeper anxieties regarding the kingdom’s regional standing and internal stability. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had staked tremendous political capital on his Vision 2030 economic reform strategy, which increasingly depended on Western investment, technological partnerships, and regional security. Normalisation with Israel was intended as a crowning jewel that would cement Saudi Arabia as the favourite Arab partner of both Israel and the United States.

The war in Gaza cut across these calculations in its very essence. Progressing towards normalisation amid mass Arab public anger would have undermined Mohammed bin Salman’s domestic legitimacy and across the Arab world, where Saudi leadership is claimed in part on the grounds of its custodianship of Islam’s holiest sites. The kingdom was trapped between its security turning toward realistic accommodations with Israel and its traditional role as a defender of Palestinian rights and Arab dignity.

This ambivalence has broader significance than Saudi-Israeli bilateral affairs. It is evidence of doubt about the general strategic orientation of the Gulf in an era of waning U.S. security guarantees. The Abraham Accords rested in part on hopes that Arab-Israeli normalisation would create a regional security order against Iran, blessed by or at least supported by American implicit or explicit backing. The Gaza war revealed fault with this model—Israeli military actions had generated regional instability rather than reduced it, and the United States was unable or unwilling to impose constraints on Israeli actions that had inflamed Arab public opinion.

Declining U.S. Leverage and the Multipolar Scramble

American power in the Middle East, which was on the decline throughout the last decade, has been further undermined in the aftermath of Gaza. The perception that Washington was powerless to curb Israeli military action while also powerless to bring about significant Palestinian statehood progress left it with less credibility throughout the region. Arab governments ever more frequently see the United States as incapable of producing promised results, be it security assurances, diplomatic achievements, or regional stability.

This view has hastened regional states’ diversification of alliances. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have strengthened security and economic relations with China, which facilitated the Saudi-Iran rapprochement in 2023 and provides an alternative to Western alignment without political conditionality. Russia, even with its Ukraine quagmire, continues to be a player in Syria and has energy partnerships with Gulf states. Even regional middle powers such as Turkey and Egypt are taking more autonomous foreign policies, hedging between great powers instead of having a strict alliance with any one patron.

The outcome is a more multipolar Middle East with overlapping and sometimes competing alliances. Saudi Arabia purchases Chinese technology but retains U.S. security connections. The UAE normalises relations with Israel but expands trade with Iran. Turkey aligns with Russia in Syria but remains a NATO member. The complexity of this makes regional management much more difficult and diminishes the influence of any single external power to shape events decisively.

The New Middle East Cold War: Competing Visions and Frozen Conflicts

What has arisen in the wake of the collapse of normalisation momentum is a new regional Cold War with several dimensions. At one end is the Iran-led bloc of resistance, now tactically coordinated with Turkey, against normalisation and pushing to keep Israel and its Arab allies under pressure. At another is the Abraham Accords alliance—Israel, UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco—trying to protect gains in normalisation while dealing with public relations blowback. Saudi Arabia holds a vague middle ground, keeping doors open to both factions but firmly committing to neither.

This Cold War differs in several respects from its earlier historical incarnation. Most importantly, it has no clear bipolar form of U.S.-Soviet rivalry; rather, there are various regional powers, each playing the game with competing visions and differing levels of outside assistance. And secondly, it contains economic interdependence that limits all-out conflict—even rivals like Iran and the UAE are substantial trading partners. Third, it exists in an age of information war and hybrid warfare in which proxy forces, cyber actions, and battles of narratives are just as important as traditional military might.

The clashes born of this Cold War, in Gaza, Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon, have the potential to freeze instead of resolve. All are fronts in wider regional competition where neither side can win a decisive victory, but neither can afford total withdrawal. This leaves them in a managed instability that, from time to time, erupts into acute crisis, as Gaza did.

Implications for India: Navigating Between Gulf and Israel

For India, these Middle Eastern realignments have far-reaching implications across several fields. Energy security is again topmost—the Gulf supplies around 60 per cent of India’s oil imports and is home to more than eight million Indian expatriates whose remittances are the bedrock of the Indian economy. Any instability in the region imperils both energy supply and diaspora security, as episodic evacuation operations from conflict areas show.

India’s increasing strategic relationship with Israel, especially on defence technology and intelligence co-operation, introduces yet another twist of complexity. The Gaza conflict placed India in the awkward situation of upholding Palestinian rights while sustaining Israel relations, disclosing strains in its multi-alignment approach. India abstained on several UN resolutions on Gaza, but also boosted humanitarian assistance to Palestinians, trying to appease different constituencies at once.

The Abraham Accords had appeared to dispel this tension by enabling India to deepen Israel relations without offending Arab partners who were normalising in their own right. The collapse of normalisation momentum strips this neat diplomatic cover, compelling India into more overt decisions. The UAE and Saudi Arabia, critical Indian allies, now insist on more vocal backing for Palestinian statehood as the cost of further cooperation, with Israel looking to strategic allies for solidarity.

India’s test is further complicated by the changing security landscape of the region. The weakening of American influence holds out both opportunities and challenges. India can potentially take on a greater role as an arms supplier, technology partner, and diplomatic balancer for Gulf nations looking to diversify out of Western dependence. This can be done by walking a tightrope between Gulf-Iranian tensions, Israeli-Arab relations, and India’s own alliances with Washington.

The Iran-Turkey alignment is especially challenging to Indian diplomacy. India has significant ties with both countries—Iran for energy and access to Afghanistan, and Turkey for trade and security. Their strategic alignment against normalisation puts India under pressure to define its stance on regional alignments in a manner that may alienate allies on both sides.

Recalibrating India’s West Asia Policy

India needs to completely redefine its West Asia policy in order to be effective in the new environment. First, it ought to resist pressure to take sides in the new cold war paradigm unfolding in the Middle East, in favour of retaining strategic autonomy that enables it to engage all states in the region. It should continue its traditional approach of non-alignment, though it will need to rethink it for the purpose of multipolar competition.

Second, India should prioritise developing economic and people-to-people ties rather than entangling security ties that may draw it into future regional conflict. Energy partnerships, investment flows, and protections for diaspora communities should be prioritised before arms sales or intelligence sharing, which carry the risk of entanglement.

Third, India must build more sophistication regarding the Middle East within its diplomatic and strategic community. India has long regarded the Middle East as an energy issue and a diaspora management issue, instead of an exceedingly nuanced geopolitical terrain that demands complex engagement. Building the capacity for India to understand and analyse change within the region is crucial for good policymaking.

Fourth, India must attempt to leverage multilateral forums, e.g., the BRICS or Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, to involve regional actors in settings where states are not forced to choose between rival alignments. These areas of interaction are helpful because they create venues where one can interact, talk, and negotiate across rival alignments in a non-competitive framework. For instance, BRICS would allow India to engage Iran in addition to the perceived oppositional Gulf countries, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation would enable India to engage Turkey in addition to Egypt.

Conclusion: Uncertainty as the New Normal

The collapse of Arab-Israeli normalisation and the onset of a new Middle East Cold War reflect not passing obstacles to the region, but a deeper reshaping of regional relations. The prospect of an integrated and consolidating Middle East based on an Arab-Israeli alliance has been eclipsed by contentious blocs, open disputes, and waning external salience. For New Delhi, to manoeuvre within this landscape requires new thinking on regional trends and embracing strategic flexibility as a doctrine. The Middle East’s turmoil is not transitory; it is the new normal, and it will need sustained attention, diplomatic acumen, and readiness to readjust policy constantly in motion. Those who embrace this fact shall discover opportunity out of complexity, but those who base themselves on previous orders shall find themselves irrelevant in an incredibly vital part of the globe.

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Daljeet Singh

Daljeet Singh holds a BTech in Computer Science and is currently pursuing an MA in Political Science. His interests range across geopolitics, international relations, and technology. An avid reader and writer, he is passionate about exploring the intersections of these fields. Views expressed are the author’s own.

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