What It Is
The Negev Forum is a 2022-launched regional cooperation platform institutionalizing engagement among signatories, Egypt, and the US. The Forum was inaugurated at a March 2022 summit at Sde Boker (David Ben-Gurion's home in the Negev desert), bringing together the foreign ministers of Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Egypt, and the US.
The Forum's establishment marked the first institutional embodiment of post-Abraham Accords Middle East cooperation — a substantive structure to give the normalization agreements a continuing diplomatic and operational platform.
Six Working Groups
The Forum has six working groups covering:
- Education and tolerance: educational exchange, religious tolerance, addressing antisemitism and Islamophobia.
- Food security and water: cooperation on agricultural technology, water-scarcity management, regional food security.
- Energy: regional energy infrastructure, renewable energy cooperation, oil and gas cooperation.
- Health: healthcare cooperation, pandemic preparedness, medical training.
- Regional security: counter-terrorism, intelligence sharing, maritime security.
- Tourism: cross-border tourism development, religious tourism, hospitality industry cooperation.
Each working group includes representatives from member states and meets at varying frequencies. Implementation has been uneven across the six groups.
Egypt's Strategic Position
Egypt's participation extended the beyond the strict Abraham Accords states. Egypt was the original Arab state to recognize Israel (Camp David, 1979) and remained the largest Arab state with normal diplomatic relations with Israel through the long years before the Abraham Accords. Cairo's participation in the Negev Forum signaled:
- Egyptian endorsement of the post-Abraham Accords regional architecture.
- Strategic alignment of Egypt with the moderate Arab states involved in normalization.
- Diplomatic continuity between pre-Abraham Accords Egyptian-Israeli peace and post-Accords regional cooperation.
Why It Matters
The Forum represents the most institutionalized form of Arab-Israeli regional cooperation in modern history. Previous bilateral peace agreements (Egypt 1979, Jordan 1994) did not produce substantive multilateral regional cooperation; the Abraham Accords plus the Negev Forum aimed to change that.
The Forum's significance also lies in its membership choices:
- Including Egypt but not Jordan suggested differentiation among Arab states based on enthusiasm for post-Accords cooperation.
- Excluding Saudi Arabia — which had not normalized with Israel — was notable; the Saudi case was approached separately.
- US participation demonstrated the central US role in the framework.
The 2023–26 Disruption
Ministerial meetings were planned regularly, but the Forum's institutional momentum slowed sharply after the October 2023 Hamas attacks and Gaza war — though states maintained working-level engagement.
The Gaza war made high-profile Arab-Israeli cooperation politically toxic for Arab partners. Ministerial summits were postponed; public statements were minimized; working-group meetings continued but without political fanfare.
The disruption was significant. The Forum had been on track to deepen and to potentially expand membership; the Gaza war pushed many of those plans years into the future.
Implementation Varied
Implementation of working groups varied. Energy and water cooperation has progressed most concretely:
- Israel-Jordan electricity-for-water swap: solar power from Jordan in exchange for desalinated water from Israel (though Jordan suspended in early 2024).
- UAE solar exports to Israel: bilateral electricity arrangements.
- Multinational water-management projects: technical cooperation among water-scarce member states.
- Regional energy infrastructure: discussions of natural-gas interconnections and renewable-energy projects.
Other working groups (education, tourism, regional security) made less concrete progress — partly due to bilateral political sensitivities and partly to the post-October 2023 disruption.
Common Misconceptions
The Negev Forum is sometimes confused with the Abraham Accords themselves. The Accords are the bilateral normalization agreements; the Negev Forum is the multilateral cooperation framework built on top of them.
Another misconception is that the Forum has been formally suspended. It has not — working-level engagement has continued; only high-profile ministerial summits have been postponed.
Real-World Examples
The March 2022 Sde Boker inaugural summit was the founding moment, with notable optics of Israeli and Arab foreign ministers convening at Ben-Gurion's desert home. The 2023 working-group meetings in various member states demonstrated operational continuity before the Gaza disruption. The post-Gaza-war revival discussions in 2025–26 have begun to explore whether the Forum can be restored to higher visibility once political conditions allow.
Example
The Negev Forum's energy working group has produced concrete progress on Eastern Mediterranean gas cooperation — including discussions of expanded Israeli gas exports through Egypt's LNG infrastructure.