In a historic signing ceremony hosted by President Donald Trump at the White House, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain became the third and fourth Arab nations to move toward establishing full diplomatic relations with Israel.

“We’re here this afternoon to change the course of history”, - Trump said, speaking from the South Lawn of the White House ahead of the signing, presenting himself as a diplomat and dealmaker weeks ahead of the election. “After decades of division and conflict we mark the dawn of a new Middle East”.

Representatives for Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain similarly heralded the historic nature of the agreements between their countries, making slight nods to the absent Palestinians and using soaring rhetoric to portray the dawn of a new era in the Middle East.

The four men then signed copies of several documents: one between Israel and the UAE described by an announcer as “a treaty of peace, diplomatic relations, and full normalization”, another between Israel and Bahrain described as a “declaration of peace”, and a third that all four signed described as the “Abraham Accords”, a name used by the White House in reference to the patriarch of Judaism, Islam and Christianity.