US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the top diplomats of Israel andfour Arab states wrapped up a landmark meeting Monday vowing to boostcooperation, which Israel said would send a strong message to its arch-foeIran.
The talks brought together for the first time on Israeli soil the foreignministers of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco — which allnormalised ties with the Jewish state in 2020 — and of Egypt, a countryformally at peace with Israel since 1979.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said that “this new architecture, theshared capabilities we are building, intimidates and deters our commonenemies — first and foremost Iran and its proxies.
“They certainly have something to fear,” he said about Iran, a countryIsrael is fighting in a regional shadow war and which it accuses of seekinga nuclear bomb, a goal the Islamic republic denies pursuing.
UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan called the two-daygathering “historic” and said that “what we are trying to achieve here ischanging the narrative, creating a different future”.
The meeting’s Sunday opening, in the Sde Boker kibbutz in the Negev desert,was marred by a shooting attack in northern Israel that killed two policeofficers and was claimed by the Daesh group, which has rarely managed tostage attacks inside Israel.
And early Monday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s office confirmed he hadcaught COVID, a day after he held closed-door meetings with Blinkenfollowed by a joint press conference without masks.Iran nuclear deal
The talks on restoring the 2015 Iran nuclear deal were high on the agendaat the Negev gathering and in Blinken’s meetings with Israeli officials.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief said at the weekend that anagreement with Iran to restore the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan ofAction could be reached “in a matter of days”.
That has raised concern in Israel and across much of the Middle East, wheremany US-allied Arab states view Iran as a menace.
An Israeli official, speaking to *AFP *on condition of anonymity, saidafter the Sde Boker talks: “All countries here except the US havereservations about a nuclear deal with Iran and what happened is that wegot them closer to our approach.”
Blinken on Sunday stressed that Israel and the US “see eye-to-eye” on thecore issue of stopping Iran from ever getting a nuclear bomb, despite theirdifferences on the JCPOA.‘No substitute’
The UAE and Bahrain formed ties with Israel under the Abraham Accords,brokered by former US president Donald Trump. Morocco then re-establishedrelations with Israel under a separate Trump-brokered agreement.
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Israeli leaders have argued that the normalisations highlight a changedMiddle East, where Arab leaders are no longer compelled to isolate Israelover its unsolved conflict with the Palestinians.
The Abraham Accords infuriated the Palestinians, who argued that theymarked a betrayal of a decades-old Arab League consensus.
A small group of protesters outside the Negev venue sought to force thePalestinian issue into the room, waving placards that said “Haven’t youforgotten someone?”
Blinken – who departed Israel on Monday afternoon for Morocco — has voicedstrong support for the Abraham Accords but cautioned that they cannotreplace Israeli-Palestinian peace-building.
“We have to be clear that these regional peace agreements are not asubstitute for progress between Palestinians and Israelis,” said Blinken,who had on Sunday met Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in theIsraeli-occupied West Bank.
Blinken has insisted that President Joe Biden’s administration is committedto repairing Palestinian relations, which collapsed under Trump.
But the Palestinian leader told Blinken on Sunday that the West showed”double standards,” taking a hard line against Russia’s invasion of Ukrainewhile ignoring what he called Israel’s “crimes” against his people.
As the diplomats were wrapped up in their Negev meeting, Abbas hostedJordan’s King Abdullah II in Ramallah, the monarch’s first visit to theWest Bank since 2017.
Jordan – the only Arab country with full Israeli ties that was not at theNegev meeting – has played a middleman role between Israel and thePalestinian Authority.
Jordan’s king seemed to echo Blinken’s warning about the limits ofnormalisation in his meeting with Abbas, saying that “the region cannotenjoy security and stability without a just and comprehensive solution tothe Palestinian issue”, according to the official Palestinian news agency.-APP/AFP
