Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken with the foreign ministers of Israel, Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates for talks in Negev Summit, centered on shared security concerns. Reuters

The foreign ministers of the United States and Israel were joined by their four Arab counterparts from Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates in an unprecedented summit in Israel’s southern Negev desert on Monday. “This meeting is the first of its kind but not the last,” Israel foreign minister Yair Lapid said during the closing press conference. ” Last night we decided to make the Negev Summit into a permanent forum.”

Israel has hosted diplomates from Abraham Accords countries, but never three at the same time and also including high-level representation from the Biden Administration.

The Negev Summit showed a new level of relations between Israel and its Arab neighbours. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken hailed the summit as the latest indication of realignment of Middle East relations that prone peace and stability across the region. ” Just a few years ago this gathering would be impossible to imagine,” Blinken said.

The new political and military Middle East Alliance is on the making, with potentially to promote values and enable members to cooperate on defence and security related issues to solve problems, build trust and prevent conflicts.

Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979 and is not formally part of the Abraham Accords, under whose rubric Israel normalised ties with four Arab countries: the UAE, Bahrain,Morocco and Sudan.

Blinken did host a virtual meeting with representatives of the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco in September to mark one-year anniversary of the Abraham Accords, brokered in 2020 by former US President Donald Trump.

The summit comes amid Israeli efforts to mediate a solution to the war in Ukraine, a conflict that has sparked wider security concerns for NATO and EU, and sent oil prices soaring. The meeting also provided a forum to discuss both disagreements and shared concerns about Ukraine

It also comes as the US administration and Iran are close to reaching the revival of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA), which aimed to prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear weapons capacity. As for Israel, one of its core focus is to muster an effective alliance against the common threat, Iran.

As for the regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia, they are absent from the summit, but present in spirit and potent behind the scenes. Though, Saudis are not part of the Abraham Accords, Jerusalem and Riyadh are working to enhance regional unity against Tehran.

The Negev Summit signals that these new partners are cooperating more closely and openly instead of mainly maintaining only their bilateral ties, which mark a new realignment of Middle East powers.