Why peace?

A fair question

Why do we need peace at all? Anyone who grew up in this region has seen agreements signed and violence go on. The doubt is reasonable, and it deserves an answer in facts.

Peace between states is not friendship, and it is not the end of disagreement. It is an agreed way to manage disagreement without war: a recognised border, an embassy, a phone that someone answers, and a mechanism for settling disputes. This page deals only with that plane: relations between one state and another.

What peace between states actually gives

Lives and security

No war has broken out between Israel and Egypt since the 1973 war, and the Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty has been in force since 1979¹. There has been no war between Israel and Jordan since their peace treaty of 1994². That still holds in October 2026, with political relations with both at a low point and ambassadorial posts left unfilled³⁴.

Budget freed for other things

According to World Bank data, sourced from SIPRI, Israel's military spending was 30.5% of GDP in 1975, 19.4% in 1979 and 4.4% in 2022. For Egypt: 15.4%, 6.5% and 1.0%⁵⁶. The figures do not prove that peace alone caused the fall, and in war the trend reverses: in 2024 Israel's figure rose to 8.8%⁵.

A border that becomes a crossing

The Washington Declaration of 1994 provided for two new border crossings between Israel and Jordan, direct telephone lines and linked electricity grids⁷. The Arava crossing, between Eilat and Aqaba, opened two weeks after the signing⁸.

Energy and water

Israel has exported natural gas to Egypt since January 2020⁹. In 2022 it exported 9.2 billion cubic metres to Egypt and Jordan¹⁰, and according to the Carnegie Endowment Israeli gas covers 15 to 20 per cent of Egypt's daily consumption¹¹. Israel supplies Jordan with water under the peace treaty, but the supplementary water deal lapsed in November 2025 and was not renewed¹².

Trade, flights and tourism

By 2023 there were 106 direct flights a week between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and more than a million Israelis had visited¹³. The caveat: the traffic runs almost entirely one way. Only about 1,600 Emiratis have visited Israel since normalization¹³, and 82% of the UAE's exports to Israel in January–September 2022 were re-exports of goods from elsewhere¹⁰.

A channel for solving the next crisis

The dispute over Taba lasted seven years and was settled by international arbitration, not by force: Israel handed Taba to Egypt on 15 March 1989¹⁴. In November 2021 the Egyptian army announced an agreed amendment to the treaty's security annex, allowing it to station more border guards in the Rafah area¹⁵.

Standing and partnerships

The QIZ protocol of 2004 opens the US market, duty-free, to Egyptian goods with an Israeli component¹⁶. Peace also had a price: the Arab League suspended Egypt in 1979 and readmitted it only in 1989¹⁷.

Enemies that became neighbours

What research says

In 2015 the RAND Corporation modelled ten-year scenarios. Under a two-state solution the Israeli economy gains about $123 billion and the Palestinian economy about $50 billion. Under a violent uprising, GDP per person falls by 10% in Israel and by 46% in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip²⁴. These are model estimates, not a forecast.

An International Monetary Fund working paper of 2020 found that in sub-Saharan Africa, annual growth in countries in intense conflict is about 2.5 percentage points lower²⁵. The Institute for Economics & Peace estimates that the global economic impact of violence in 2025 was $21.81 trillion, 10.5% of world GDP²⁶. That is the institute's own estimate, and it covers violence in general, not only wars between states.

Does trade prevent war? A study of data for 1950–2000 found that a 10% rise in trade between two neighbouring states is associated with a fall of about 1.9% in the probability of military conflict between them²⁷. Other studies have reached different conclusions, and it is hard to prove which causes which: states at peace may simply trade more²⁷.

Peace also has a price and a risk: concessions, security risk and opposition at home. Agreements also fail or stall. This site sets out the hard decisions in each agreement, for example in the Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty and in Oslo II.

A new Middle East: the idea, the criticism, and what has been built

The idea (1993)

In 1993 Shimon Peres published, with Arye Naor, the book The New Middle East²⁸. The idea: economic cooperation as a foundation for peace, a common market inspired by Europe, and large infrastructure projects such as a canal from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea²⁸.

The criticism

An economist who reviewed the book in 1994 argued that the region's economies are small and compete with one another, and that economics cannot replace political decisions. He noted that some Arabs feared Israel was replacing military conquest with economic domination²⁸. In Israel the idea drew scorn for years²⁹. Another commentator asked in 2016 how a new Middle East was possible without ending the occupation and without an answer for Palestinian rights³⁰.

Real: the East Mediterranean Gas Forum

The forum's statute was signed on 22 September 2020. It is based in Cairo, and its members are Israel, Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, alongside Greece, Cyprus and Italy³¹. It is a framework for one field, natural gas, not a common market.

Announced and delayed: the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC)

The memorandum of understanding was signed on 9 September 2023, on the sidelines of the G20 summit, by eight partners, among them India, the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the European Union³². The planned route: rail and ports from India through the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel to Europe, with electricity and data cables and a hydrogen pipeline. The memorandum creates no legal obligation³³. In September 2026 a senior US official said broader progress was paused because of instability in the region, and that route mapping continues³⁴.

Set up and stopped: the Negev Forum

After a summit at Sde Boker in March 2022, Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, the UAE and the United States set up six working groups³⁵. The next meeting, planned for Morocco in July 2023, was postponed against the background of settlement expansion³⁶. As of October 2026 we found no report that it has met since.

Declared and never signed: “Prosperity”

On 22 November 2021 Israel, Jordan and the UAE signed a declaration of intent: 600 megawatts of solar electricity from Jordan to Israel, and up to 200 million cubic metres of desalinated water from Israel to Jordan³⁷. On 16 November 2023 Jordan announced that it would not sign the agreement³⁸.

A civil-society proposal: the Green Blue Deal

EcoPeace, an organisation of Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli environmentalists, proposed in December 2020 desalinated water in exchange for solar energy, a new allocation of water between Israel and the Palestinians, rehabilitation of the Jordan Valley, and education³⁹. It is a proposal by a civil organisation, not a plan of governments.