The modern world speaks constantly of peace. Leaders sign declarations, hold summits, and announce frameworks. Religious figures host interfaith gatherings. Economic deals are packaged as engines of stability. Countries open embassies and trade routes even while their peoples carry deep historical wounds.

Yet violence continues. The October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks and the long war that followed, the subsequent multi-front regional confrontations involving Iran and its proxies, the incomplete and fragile ceasefire arrangements in Gaza that began in late 2025, ongoing West Bank tensions, and the broader realignments after the Iran conflict have all tested every claim about diplomacy and coexistence.

This raises a serious question for anyone who speaks of an “Abrahamic” vision of peace: can Judaism, Christianity and Islam supply a durable moral foundation for harmony, or have contemporary wars become primarily political, strategic and national struggles in which religion is sometimes invoked as identity, justification or mobilizing language?

The honest answer is neither simple nor comforting. The three Abrahamic traditions contain powerful teachings on mercy, justice, human dignity, charity, protection of the stranger and reconciliation. At the same time, their sacred texts and historical experiences also include warfare, conquest, judgment and political power.

Religion can offer a moral vocabulary for peace. It cannot, by itself, produce or sustain political peace.

That requires institutions, security arrangements, economic incentives, and the difficult work of diplomacy.

What the Abraham Accords actually represent

“Abrahamic” simply means that Judaism, Christianity and Islam all trace significant spiritual ancestry to Abraham. The modern Abraham Accords, however, were never a theological treaty. They are diplomatic agreements that normalize relations between Israel and several Arab and Muslim-majority states, beginning with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in September 2020, followed by Morocco and Sudan, with Kazakhstan formally joining in November 2025.

The original declaration spoke of mutual understanding, coexistence, human dignity, religious freedom, interfaith dialogue and friendly relations between states. The bilateral agreements emphasized practical cooperation: trade, tourism, technology, scientific exchange, cultural contact and security coordination. They did not require any party to abandon its religion or rewrite its national narrative.

In the years since, trade between Israel and its Accords partners has continued to grow even through wartime conditions. Security cooperation, including air-defense coordination, has deepened. Tourism and business links have proven surprisingly durable. At the same time, public opinion in several signatory countries remains wary, and expansion to major players such as Saudi Arabia has repeatedly stalled over the Palestinian issue.

Religion can encourage peace — it cannot guarantee it

Jewish tradition contains some of the most explicit ethical demands regarding the stranger and the vulnerable. Leviticus 19:18 commands believers to love their fellow as themselves. Deuteronomy 10:19 instructs the community to befriend the stranger, recalling that they too were once strangers in Egypt. These verses link historical memory of suffering to present-day responsibility.

Christian teaching places extraordinary weight on love of neighbor, forgiveness and reconciliation. Islamic tradition emphasizes justice (adl), mercy (rahma), charity and the protection of the vulnerable.

Yet religious texts do not automatically dictate the behavior of states or even of individual believers. Christian, Muslim and Jewish governments have all fought wars. Secular governments have done the same. Modern conflicts arise from combinations of territory, sovereignty, security fears, nationalism, historical memory, economic interests, resource competition, ideology and, sometimes, religious identity. Treating any contemporary war as purely “religious” is usually an oversimplification.

Are today’s wars religious wars?

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has profound religious dimensions. Jerusalem, the Temple Mount / Haram al-Sharif, sacred history and holy sites matter intensely to Jews, Muslims and Christians. Yet the conflict is also a national one between two peoples claiming the same land, involving refugees, borders, settlements, security, self-determination and competing historical narratives.

There are Jewish Israelis who support a Palestinian state and Muslim voices that accept Israel’s existence. There are secular and religious actors on both sides. International diplomacy continues to frame the issue primarily as a political dispute between two national communities rather than a purely theological one. Reducing it to “Jews versus Muslims” erases this complexity and makes solutions harder.

Similar patterns appear elsewhere. Conflicts in the wider region after 2023 have involved Iranian strategic ambitions, proxy warfare, great-power competition and local power struggles far more than pure religious doctrine.

Homeland and diaspora: why Jews are not concentrated in one country

Jewish history developed over millennia as both a religion and a people living across many societies. The diaspora is not an accident or a failure; it is a central feature of Jewish experience.

Significant communities remain in France, Canada, the United Kingdom, Argentina, Germany, Russia, Australia and elsewhere. A person can be Jewish by religion, culture or ancestry and hold citizenship in any country. Jewish identity does not automatically equal Israeli citizenship. Israel is the world’s only Jewish-majority state and the primary homeland for those who choose to live there, but Jewish life continues robustly outside it.

The modern state of Israel emerged from the convergence of ancient connection to the Land of Israel, the rise of modern Jewish nationalism (Zionism) in the late nineteenth century, persistent European antisemitism, and the catastrophe of the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were murdered. After World War II, many survivors and their communities concluded that Jewish security required sovereign self-determination.

The United Nations partition plan of 1947 recommended separate Jewish and Arab states. Jewish leadership accepted it; Arab leadership rejected it. Israel declared independence in May 1948. The subsequent wars, the displacement of Palestinians, and the later arrival of hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab and Muslim countries created the demographic and political reality we still live with.

This history does not automatically justify every subsequent Israeli policy, nor does it erase Palestinian suffering and displacement. It does mean that Israel’s existence cannot be dismissed as an arbitrary colonial project without historical Jewish roots in the land. The record is more complicated, and more tragic, than either maximalist narrative allows.

It is also historically inaccurate to portray Jewish-Muslim relations as one long story of hostility. For centuries, substantial Jewish communities lived across the Middle East and North Africa — in Morocco, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen, Iran, Turkey, Tunisia, Algeria, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere, producing scholars, merchants, physicians, musicians and communal leaders. In the twentieth century, especially after 1948, most of these communities largely disappeared through emigration, expulsion or flight. The Jewish diaspora is therefore not only a European story; it is also a Middle Eastern and North African one.

Do Jews “follow the Torah”?

The Torah in its narrowest sense refers to the Five Books of Moses — Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. These remain foundational. Yet Judaism has never operated as a simple “read the English translation and obey every verse literally” system. Centuries of rabbinic interpretation — Mishnah, Talmud, later codes and responsa — shape how commandments are understood and applied.

• Orthodox communities generally treat traditional Jewish law (halakhah) as binding.
• Conservative/Masorti Judaism maintains a more flexible but still law-oriented approach.
• Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism emphasize ethical principles, personal autonomy and evolving interpretation.

Saying “Jews follow the Torah exactly as written” is too crude. Saying “Jews do not follow the Torah” is false. The accurate statement is that the Torah is foundational, but Jews interpret and live it through varied religious traditions, legal frameworks and degrees of observance.

Shared scripture, shared contradictions

The Torah, the Christian Bible and the Qur’an all contain strong ethical demands regarding justice, mercy, care for the vulnerable and responsibility toward others. They also contain narratives of warfare, conquest, political struggle and divine judgment. Ancient scriptures arose in ancient worlds. Their later interpretation within living religious communities is what matters for contemporary ethics. Treating any of the three traditions as either pure pacifism or inherent violence is a distortion.

The lasting significance of the Accords is that they do not demand theological agreement. The UAE does not become Jewish; Israel does not become Muslim; Morocco does not abandon Islam. States can disagree profoundly on religion and history and still cooperate on trade, technology, tourism, scientific research and security — a more realistic proposition than requiring doctrinal uniformity.

Modern warfare itself is often highly diplomatic. States negotiate, impose sanctions, form alliances, mediate, threaten and prepare for force simultaneously. Handshakes and photo opportunities are only the visible surface. Durable peace requires institutions that can survive leadership changes, security arrangements that reduce existential fear, economic opportunities that give ordinary people a stake in stability, and some measure of justice that addresses historical grievances without turning them into permanent vetoes.

A Jew is not responsible for every decision of the Israeli government. A Muslim is not responsible for every action of a Muslim-majority state.

Without this distinction, interfaith conversation collapses into mutual accusation.

What a serious Abrahamic approach would actually promote

Shared moral language does not require identical theology. From Judaism comes the covenantal emphasis on justice and the stranger. From Christianity comes a strong tradition of forgiveness and reconciliation. From Islam comes a profound stress on mercy, justice and accountability before God. These can be resources for mutual recognition rather than weapons of mutual negation.

• Recognition of the equal human dignity of Jews, Christians, Muslims and others.
• Genuine religious freedom and protection of minorities.
• Honest acknowledgment of historical suffering on all sides — the Holocaust and centuries of antisemitism, Palestinian displacement and occupation, and the experiences of Jewish communities that left Arab and Muslim lands. One tragedy does not cancel another.
• Preference for negotiation and diplomacy over permanent warfare.
• Practical economic, scientific, educational and people-to-people cooperation that creates constituencies for stability.
• Education that teaches the basic beliefs and histories of the other traditions rather than relying solely on political propaganda.

Faith, politics and the hard work of coexistence

Abrahamic religion does not automatically create peace, nor does it inevitably produce war. Religions supply moral principles. People interpret them. Governments pursue interests. Nations seek security. Communities remember trauma. Diplomats try to keep these forces from becoming endless cycles of violence.

The Abraham Accords remain a significant, if limited, demonstration that states with different religions and histories can choose recognition and practical cooperation over isolation and permanent hostility. Their survival through the post-October 7 upheavals shows resilience. Their incomplete expansion and the unresolved Palestinian question show the limits of any approach that sidesteps core political grievances.

Jews are not a people who simply refused to live in one place. Jewish history produced both a sovereign homeland and a worldwide diaspora. The Torah remains foundational to Jewish life, yet Jews do not form a single bloc that observes it in identical ways.

The deepest Abrahamic possibility is not that the three traditions become the same. It is that people who inherit different sacred stories and different historical wounds can still recognize one another’s humanity and refuse to make hatred their destiny. Translating “love your fellow” and “love the stranger” from scripture into law, diplomacy, education and daily relationships is the real work. It is slower, harder and less dramatic than slogans. It is also the only path that has ever produced lasting peace.

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