Sledgehammer: How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East

The Trump Administration Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, tells the story of how the Abraham Accords—the historic deals between Israel and five Muslim nations—came to pass.

For over a century, the Middle East has been locked in a series of bloody struggles. In 2020, the United States brokered an historic series of peace deals between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors, the first in a generation. The Abraham Accords normalized relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, Kosovo and Morocco. The accords were the result of painstaking, behind-the-scenes work by a small team with no prior diplomatic experience, including Ambassador David Friedman. Sledgehammer is the full story of the accord—its origin and how it was successfully achieved.

In the past, the accepted wisdom on Middle Eastern diplomacy was that extensive prior experience and detailed knowledge of the region’s history and culture were necessary to negotiate the details that are the foundational framework of treaties. But in truth, Friedman explains, both sides played on that accepted wisdom to stall—each hoping to achieve a deal better for their side further down the road. As the prospects for the President’s Vision for Peace between Israel and the Palestinians was growing dimmer due to the intransigence of the Palestinians, the chaos of Israeli politics, and the unforeseen worldwide pandemic, David Friedman and his team found themselves in a position to negotiate five historic peace agreements—not between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but between Israel and four of its Arab neighbors along with Kosovo. Friedman realized that a new future was possible now, not at some nebulous future point, and that the United States needed to find a way to facilitate it or lose out forever. 

Friedman takes us across the globe and back, from the Oval Office to the highest echelons of power in the Middle East and puts us at the table during the intense negotiations that led to this historic breakthrough. The inside story of arguably the greatest achievement of the Trump Administration, Sledgehammer is an important, inspiring story of the hard but hopeful work necessary to bring long overdue—and lasting—peace to one of the most turbulent and tragic regions of the globe.