Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at the opening event of the largest-ever bipartisan delegation of American legislators to Israel at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem on Sept. 15, 2025. Photo: Debbie Hill/Pool via REUTERS

Israel needs to invest heavily in “influence operations” in traditional and social media to counteract economic isolation arising from negative publicity abroad, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday.

Speaking at a Finance Ministry conference, Netanyahu said foreign investment into Israel had held up in the wake of a 12-day war against Iran in June, which he said removed an immediate threat of a nuclear-armed foe.

But in a rare acknowledgment of the isolation arising from international criticism of Israel‘s war in Gaza, he said Israel faced an economic threat of sanctions and other measures.

He blamed isolation on minorities in Europe pushing “anti-Zionist and extreme Islamist ideology,” and on countries such as Qatar, backer of Arabic broadcaster Al Jazeera, investing in shaping global discourse through social media.

“This leads to sanctions against Israel and alters Israel‘s international standing … and this leads to a kind of isolation for Israel,” Netanyahu said. “We can break out of this isolation, but we must invest heavily in countermeasures — particularly in media and social media influence operations.”

Netanyahu said Israel should reduce the dependence of its industries on trade with other countries.

“We might find ourselves blocked not only in R&D but also in actual industrial production. We must start developing our capabilities to rely more on ourselves,” he said, adding that should also include arms and other defense products.

In a response, opposition leader Yair Lapid said international isolation was “the product of a wrong and failed policy by Netanyahu and his government.”

“They are turning Israel into a third world country and are not even trying to change the situation,” he wrote on X. “Israel can return to being successful, popular, with a thriving first-world economy.”

The war in Gaza was triggered by a rampage into southern Israel by Hamas terrorists who killed around 1,200 people and captured 251 hostages.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu takes a question from the media next to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio at their joint press conference at the Prime Minister’s Office, during Rubio’s visit, in Jerusalem, Sept. 15, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Nathan Howard/Pool

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he did not rule out further strikes on Hamas leaders “wherever they are,” as the heads of Arab and Islamic states held a summit to back Qatar after Israel‘s attack last week in the Gulf state.

The Sept. 9 strike targeting leaders of the Palestinian terrorist group in Doha was a significant escalation of Israeli military action in a region shaken by conflict since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks that ignited the Gaza war.

While the assembled Arab and Muslim leaders were expressing solidarity with Qatar, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Netanyahu and gave strong backing for Israel‘s stance, although Washington has expressed unease over the Qatar strike.

Speaking alongside Netanyahu in Israel, Rubio said the only way to end the war in Gaza would be for Hamas fighters to free all hostages and surrender. While the US wants a diplomatic end to the war, “we have to be prepared for the possibility that’s not going to happen,” he said.

Washington has said it was not warned in advance before Israel attacked Qatar, which houses the biggest US military base in the Middle East. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that Israel had to be “very, very careful.”

“They have to do something about Hamas, but Qatar has been a great ally to the United States,” Trump said.

QATAR DENOUNCES ‘COWARDLY AND TREACHEROUS’ STRIKE

Hamas has said the Israeli strike killed five of its members, including a son of its exiled Gaza chief, but its leadership survived. Qatar says one of its security agents also died.

Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani urged the summit to take “practical and decisive steps” in response to the “cowardly and treacherous” strike, saying it occurred as Hamas leaders were studying a US ceasefire proposal.

The final communique of the summit, which brought together states including Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, did not contain language that appeared in a draft seen by Reuters which said the Israeli attack and other “hostile acts” threaten coexistence and efforts to normalize ties in the region.

A separate statement by the Gulf Cooperation Council said Israel’s “continuation of these aggressive policies undermines … the future of existing understandings and agreements with Israel.”

The summit’s communique did call on countries to review diplomatic and economic ties with Israel, in what Arab League Assistant Secretary General Hossam Zaki said was an invitation to states that have relations with Israel to revise them.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt, a US ally which signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, told the meeting Israel‘s actions “put obstacles in the way of any opportunities for any new peace agreements and even aborts existing ones.”

RUBIO TO FLY TO QATAR

Rubio will travel to Qatar after his visit to Israel. He called on Qatar to continue to play a constructive role in resolving the Gaza conflict, saying it could help reach the goals of releasing all 48 hostages still held in Gaza, disarming Hamas and building a better future for Gazans.

But his words alongside Netanyahu suggested Washington now considers a diplomatic solution unlikely and is backing Israel‘s plan for a major new military operation that Netanyahu says will crush Hamas once and for all.

“As much as we may wish that there be a peaceful, diplomatic way to end it, and we’ll continue to explore and be dedicated to it, we also have to be prepared for the possibility that’s not going to happen,” said Rubio, calling Hamas “savage terrorists.”

“Hamas needs to cease to exist as an armed element that can threaten the peace and security of the region,” he said.

Netanyahu did not rule out annexing the West Bank in response to moves by some countries to recognize a Palestinian state at the UN General Assembly later this month. France and Britain are among the countries that have said they will do so.

Asked whether Israel was considering extending its sovereignty to the West Bank, Netanyahu said: “A future step is a future step. We don’t need to expose it ahead of time.”

“It’s clear that taking unilateral actions against us simply invites unilateral actions on our part,” he said.

While diplomacy was unfolding in Jerusalem and Doha, Israeli forces continued their military campaign in Gaza City.

The war in Gaza was triggered by a rampage into southern Israel by Hamas terrorists who killed around 1,200 people and captured 251 hostages.

Qatar’s Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani, attends the preparatory ministerial meeting for emergency Arab-Islamic summit in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 14, 2025. Photo: Qatar Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Handout via REUTERS

The fifth anniversary of the Abraham Accords was overshadowed on Monday as top Arab diplomats gathered in Doha for an emergency summit after Israel’s strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar last week.

Five years on, experts say that, despite war and political shocks, the US-brokered deals that normalized relations between Israel and several Araba countries have endured, though not without setbacks, and many argue that strengthening them is the most effective way to defeating the hatred and terrorism that led to Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.

Trade between Abraham Accord countries in 2025 increased from the year before, though it remained well below the levels seen before the Hamas-led attack. The UAE, Israel’s most significant new trading partner, has dominated the commerce generated by the accords, signed on the lawn of the White House on Sept. 15, 2020.

Hundreds of Israeli companies now operate in the UAE, with Emirati investors channeling capital into Israeli tech startups and sovereign funds taking stakes in gas and technology ventures, though a planned $2 billion acquisition was shelved after the outbreak of the Gaza war. Recent figures show trade between Israel and the UAE reached $293 million in July 2025, a 4 percent rise from the year before, while trade with Morocco grew 32 percent in the same month to $8.7 million, according to data published by the Washington DC-based Heritage Foundation. Over the first seven months of 2025, Israel–Morocco trade totaled $71 million, a 7 percent increase from the same period in 2024, the report said.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then-US President Donald Trump, and United Arab Emirates (UAE) Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed display their copies of signed agreements as they participate in the signing ceremony of the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and some of its Middle East neighbors, in a strategic realignment of Middle Eastern countries against Iran, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, US, Sept. 15, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Tom Brenner

Asher Fredman, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation who also served as Israel director of the Abraham Accords Peace Institute — a nonprofit founded by former White House adviser and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to promote and expand the accords — said the agreements had “proven their resilience.”

He noted that the war had exposed how Hamas, with its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, continues to threaten the region’s stability. 

“Many regional leaders appreciate Israel’s efforts to remove Hamas, a terrorist group affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, from power, even if they are critical of Israel’s tactics,” he told The Algemeiner. 

But he went on to say that the war had resulted in diminishing many aspects of the “warm peace and people-to-people cooperation that made the accords so unique” and that restarting momentum will require “regional projects with tangible benefits,” with strong US backing, and ensuring Hamas can no longer undermine progress toward peace. 

“Lasting regional integration will depend on removing Hamas as the dominant military and governing power in Gaza,” he said.

Defense trade has also expanded, with Abraham Accords countries accounting for 12 percent of Israel’s $15 billion in arms exports last year, and major defense projects, including the UAE’s co-production of Israeli drones, continuing in 2025 – though many are now under wraps.

Middle East experts Elie Podeh and Yoel Guzansky, from the Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University, respectively, noted in The Jerusalem Post that Washington’s 2021 decision to place Israel within US Central Command signaled Arab states’ readiness to work with Israel openly, not just behind closed doors. Israel had already taken part in joint drills with regional neighbors, but its integration into CENTCOM created what they described as a qualitative shift in collaboration — a shift that was evident during Iranian attacks on Israel in April and October 2024 and again in June 2025.

But the UAE’s decision to bar Israeli defense firms from a major global defense and aerospace expo in Dubai later this year – reportedly in response to Israel’s strike in Doha – highlighted the political strains now testing the accords. 

Podeh and Guzansky agreed with Fredman that people-to-people ties have suffered during the war but emphasized the particular impact on younger Arabs. “The gap between elite positions and Arab public opinion – especially among younger generations – continues to widen across all countries, placing pressure on ruling elites to respond,” they said.

Earlier this month, the UAE also issued a rare public rebuke to Israel over reports of renewed annexation ambitions in the West Bank. A senior Emirati official, Lana Nusseibeh, warned that any Israeli move to apply sovereignty would constitute a “red line” for Abu Dhabi that “would severely undermine the vision and spirit of the Abraham Accords” – marking the Gulf country’s toughest criticism of Israel since the war began.

On Friday, the UAE said it had summoned Israel’s deputy ambassador over the strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s subsequent “hostile and unacceptable” remarks, in another sign of strain between the two countries with close economic and defense ties. The Emirati foreign ministry said it told David Ohad Horsandi that “the continuation of such hostile and provocative rhetoric … solidifies a situation that is unacceptable and cannot be overlooked.”

A draft resolution from the Arab-Islamic summit in Doha, a day before Monday’s emergency summit, warned that Israel’s “brutal” strike in Qatar and other actions “threaten prospects of peace and coexistence in the region, and threaten everything that has been achieved on the path of normalizing ties with Israel, including current agreements and future ones.”

The text accused Israel of “genocide, ethnic cleansing, starvation, siege, and colonizing activities and expansion policies,” and said such conduct jeopardized efforts to expand normalization with Arab nations.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with Emir Of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and GCC representatives pose for a group photo ahead of an emergency Arab-Islamic leaders’ summit convened to discuss the Sept. 9 Israeli attack on Hamas on Qatari territory, in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 15, 2025. Photo: Saudi Press Agency/Handout via REUTERS

Podeh and Guzansky noted that Saudi Arabia, once seen as the most likely next signatory to the Abraham Accords, is “treading very carefully” since the outbreak of the Gaza war. As the guardian of Islam’s holiest sites and a leading voice in the Sunni world, Riyadh is reluctant to proceed without “significant progress on the Palestinian issue” or firm American commitments on security and civilian nuclear cooperation. 

Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, Israel’s special envoy for trade and innovation and co-founder of the UAE-Israel Business Council, struck a more positive note, saying that the Abraham Accords have been “game changing for Israel and the Middle East,” and stressing that even after an extensive regional war they have “stood strong.” She noted that the signatory states have consistently condemned Hamas, blocked boycott efforts against Israel at the Arab League, and made no overtures toward unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, unlike Canada, the UK, France and Australia. 

“Even with the current tensions, it is the Abraham Accords countries who are clearly calling for the end of Hamas, as European countries remain silent,” Hassan-Nahoum told The Algemeiner.

“I am extremely optimistic about the long-term viability and even expansion of the Abraham Accords in the next ten years,” she concluded.