Declaring “the dawn of a new Middle East”, US President Donald Trump on Tuesday presided over the signing of historic diplomatic pacts between Israel and the Arab states of UAE and Bahrain, which he hopes will lead to a new order in the Middle East and cast him as a peacemaker ahead of the November 3 election.

The deals, denounced by the Palestinians, make UAE and Bahrain the third and fourth Arab states to take such steps to normalise ties since Israel signed peace treaties with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994.

As the ceremony was underway at the White House lawn, two rockets were fired from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip into Israel, the Israeli army said.

The signing of the deals, called the Abraham Accords, capped a dramatic sequence of events when the UAE and Bahrain agreed to reverse decades of ill will towards Israel without a resolution of its decades-old dispute with the Palestinians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined Emirati foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah Al Nahyan and Bahrain’s foreign minister Abdullatif Al Zayani for the signing ceremony.

Meeting Netanyahu in the Oval Office earlier, Trump said, “We’ll have at least five or six countries coming along very quickly” to forge their own accords with Israel. But Trump did not name any of the nations involved in such talks.

The agreements were signed in three languages: English, Arabic and Hebrew.

Trump is expected to use the signing of the pacts to bolster his image at home to seek a second term, fending off a stiff challenge from Democratic candidate Joe Biden.

“Together these agreements will serve as the foundation for a comprehensive peace across the entire region, something which nobody thought was possible, certainly not in this day and age, may be in many decades from now,” Trump said before the signing of the agreements.

He added: “For generations, the people of the Middle East have been held back by old conflicts hostilities lies treacheries so many things held them back… These agreements prove that the nations of the region are breaking free from the failed approaches of the past.”

(With inputs from Agencies)