World

Opinion: Arab recognition of Israel rewards its relentless land theft

Professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, Joseph Massad, argues in his latest piece for Middle East Eye that successive normalisation agreements have accepted Israel’s changing territorial claims, allowing each new conquest and annexation to become the basis for the next.

Massad says that Washington’s insistence that Arab and Muslim-majority countries normalise relations with the state of Israel has long been an area of contention, but with Israel’s increased violence and expansion, the question of which of Israel’s borders the Arab and Muslim world will be required to recognise has become all the more pertinent.Β 

Read more: Opinion:Β Arab recognition of Israel rewards its relentless land theft

Israeli Ambassador Yechiel Leiter, State Department Chief of Staff Daniel Holler and Lebanese Ambassador Nada Hamadeh sign a framework agreement in Washington, DC, 26 June 2026 (Saul Loeb/AFP)

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