Geopolitical analysts love to frame the Middle East as a region trapped in permanent ideological gridlock. They look at the public statements, the grand religious rhetoric, and the historical grievances, concluding that zero incentive exists for leadership in the Muslim world to cooperate with Israel.
They are wrong. They are misreading the map because they focus on what leaders say to television cameras rather than what they do behind closed doors.
The idea that relations with Israel offer nothing but political risk to a regional leader is a lazy consensus. It treats foreign policy as a popularity contest rather than a calculation of survival, economic modernization, and strategic defense. When you strip away the sentimentality, the real incentive structure becomes glaringly obvious.
The Flawed Premise of Ideological Foreign Policy
The fundamental mistake conventional analysis makes is assuming that states act based on shared identity rather than cold, hard national interest.
In the real world of statecraft, survival comes first. Ideology is a luxury for opposition groups; heads of state deal in realities. For decades, the dominant narrative suggested that domestic public opinion on the Palestinian issue functioned as an absolute veto over any diplomatic shifts.
I have sat in rooms with policy planners who insisted that moving toward normalization would trigger instant regime instability. Yet, history consistently shatters this assumption.
Think back to 1979. Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel. The Arab world reacted with fury, suspending Egypt from the Arab League. Conventional wisdom said Anwar Sadat had signed his own political death warrant and doomed his country to permanent isolation. What actually happened? Egypt secured its Sinai Peninsula, locked in billions of dollars in annual US military aid, and remained the cultural hub of the Arab world. The league eventually welcomed Egypt back because the regional architecture could not function without Cairo.
The same logic applied to Jordan in 1994, and it applied to the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco in 2020. Leaders do not make these moves out of sudden benevolence or shared values. They do it because the benefits of cooperation outweigh the costs of maintaining a frozen conflict.
The Three Hidden Incentives Driving Regional Realignment
To understand why a regional leader would engage with Israel, you have to look at the balance sheet. There are three core drivers that the "zero incentive" argument completely misses.
1. The Technology and Security Premium
Israel is an exporter of advanced security architecture, missile defense systems, cyber capabilities, and agricultural technology. For nations facing severe water scarcity or transition pressures away from oil-dependent economies, these are not abstract concepts. They are existential requirements.
When a state integrates Israeli technology into its infrastructure, it is not making a ideological statement. It is purchasing a capability that it cannot easily acquire elsewhere without heavy political strings attached by Washington or Beijing.
2. The Defensive Coalition Against Regional Hegemons
Foreign policy is driven by proximity and threat perception. For many Gulf states, the primary threat is not Tel Aviv; it is Tehran. The shared anxiety over Iranian regional expansion, proxy networks, and ballistic missile development creates an organic security alignment.
An alliance built on a shared enemy is often far more durable than one built on shared ideals. For a leader in the Gulf, a quiet or explicit security partnership with Israel provides a credible deterrent that complements, or in some cases replaces, a fluctuating US security guarantee.
3. Economic Diversification and Capital Flows
The post-oil transition requires massive capital investments and high-tech ecosystems. You cannot build a global tech hub by isolating the primary tech hub in your own neighborhood. Trade between Israel and the UAE topped billions of dollars within a few years of normalization. This is tangible economic data, not speculative analysis. Deals involving aviation, tourism, healthcare, and venture capital represent direct economic incentives that feed local populations and create high-value jobs.
Dismantling the "People Also Ask" Consensus
Look at the standard questions that dominate public debate, and you will see how flawed the underlying assumptions are.
Doesn't normalization alienate the domestic population?
This question assumes that autocratic or semi-autocratic regimes operate via direct democracy. They do not. Leaders manage domestic opinion through state media, economic patronage, and nationalism. While public sentiment may remain highly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, citizens rarely risk state-level destabilization over foreign policy decisions. If the state delivers economic stability, security, and global prestige, the leadership maintains its grip on power regardless of external diplomatic ties.
Why don't all Muslim-majority nations follow this path?
Because the incentive structure is not uniform. A country like Pakistan or Indonesia faces vastly different geopolitical realities than a country like Saudi Arabia or Morocco. Distance matters. Internal political mechanics matter. For a leader thousands of miles away with zero shared security threats and minimal economic overlap, the cost of normalization outweighs the benefit. But for states in the immediate neighborhood, the calculus flips.
The Real Downside of the Pragmatic Approach
To be fair, this transactional approach carries significant risks. The downside to building a foreign policy purely on transactional pragmatism is that transactions can expire.
If Israel experiences deep internal political instability, or if its actions create a humanitarian crisis so acute that it threatens the internal security of its partners, the deal pauses. We see this friction constantly. Treaties do not stop leaders from issuing harsh public condemnations when violence escalates.
But notice what does not happen: the treaties are rarely torn up. The embassies remain. The intelligence sharing continues underground. The economic ties might cool, but the foundational infrastructure remains intact because the structural incentives that created the relationship did not vanish.
Stop Asking the Wrong Question
The question "What incentive is there for a Muslim leader to do anything for Israel?" is fundamentally flawed because it frames diplomacy as a favor.
No leader does anything "for Israel." They do it for themselves.
They do it to secure their borders, modernize their economies, protect their regimes from regional rivals, and guarantee their relevance in a rapidly changing global order. The moment you stop viewing Middle Eastern geopolitics through the lens of a zero-sum ideological conflict and start looking at it as a marketplace of sovereign interests, the entire puzzle falls into place. The incentives aren't missing; you just have to look at the balance sheet instead of the rhetoric.
