Israel's arms deals with Abraham Accord signatories have significantly dropped amid its war on Gaza, according to a recent report by the Israeli Ministry of Defence.
On 17 June, Tel Aviv celebrated a "new record achieved, for the third consecutive year, by Israeli arms sales in 2023, amounting to nearly double the value of exports compared to five years ago."
The value of exports reached US$13 billion last year, up from US$12.5 billion in 2022.
However, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco, which normalised relations with Israel in 2020, did not follow this trend. Their arms purchase from Israel accounted for only 3% of the total, down from 24% in 2022.
This decrease coincides with Israel launching a war on the besieged Gaza Strip last October.
Israel's war on Gaza has fuelled anti-Israel sentiments within the Abraham Accord signatory states, with hundreds of thousands protesting in Morocco and Bahrain, calling for the revocation of the normalisation deal with Tel Aviv and the severing of all ties with Israel.
Bahraini authorities have arrested and harassed scores of participants in pro-Palestine protests across the country, including children and people who engaged in online pro-Palestine advocacy since October 2023, according to Human Rights Watch.
Meanwhile, Rabat has tolerated anti-Israel demonstrations around the country, with only a few instances of repression reported, particularly against protests targeting the French embassy and companies boycotted by the BDS movement, such as Carrefour supermarket.
It remains unclear whether these countries are moving towards slowly cutting off their military cooperation with Israel, considering the current data.
However, top diplomats from the UAE and Morocco have defended their normalisation with Israel as a diplomatic tool to negotiate more aid for the Palestinian people in Gaza.
Also, Morocco will reportedly host an Israeli drone production site by BlueBird Aero System, according to BlueBird CEO. Rabat has not yet addressed this information since it was first published in April.
In its commentary on these figures, the Israeli Ministry of Defence did not focus on the decline in orders from MENA clients, preferring to highlight the increase in contracts concluded in 2023.
"Even though our defence industries are engaged in the war effort, they continue to sign increasingly significant export agreements," the ministry report reads.
