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1h50
Saturday September 12, 2020
Berlin (Deutsche Welle)
Bahrain became the second country to announce an agreement to normalize relations with Israel in less than a month, after the agreement of the United Arab Emirates and the Hebrew state. The rapprochement with Israel has been welcomed by some Arab countries, but others have rejected the idea or treated it with caution.
During a Middle East tour in late August that included Israel, Sudan, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressed optimism that more countries Arabs would normalize their relations with Israel.
Manama and Khartoum are likely to follow the example of the UAE, which has become the third Arab country to establish diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. Although Saudi Arabia did not condemn the deal, it refused to normalize relations until Israel signed an internationally recognized peace deal with the Palestinians, who saw the UAE-Israel deal as a “betrayal” of their cause.
The Sultanate of Oman is the second to host
The Sultanate was the second Gulf state to welcome the UAE’s announcement to normalize relations with Israel on August 13. Four days later, Muscat affirmed its commitment to the “right” of the Palestinian people “to establish their independent state, with East Jerusalem as its capital”.
Although the Sultanate has not established formal relations with Israel, in October 2018 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had surprising talks with the late Sultan Qaboos in Muscat. The visit took place 24 years after then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin visited.
The Sultanate signed an agreement with Israel in January 1996 to open offices for reciprocal trade representation, and the Sultanate decided to close the office in 2000 with the outbreak of the Second Palestinian Intifada. Chenzia Bianco, a researcher specializing in Middle Eastern affairs at the Institute of the European Council on Foreign Relations, said the Omani Sultan “is already acting cautiously due to potential economic problems and will not risk a similar controversial decision for the moment”.
The lack of a Qatari response
Unlike its regional allies Iran and Turkey, Qatar has made no reaction to the UAE’s normalization of relations with Israel. Relations between Qatar and the United Arab Emirates have been cut off since 2017. Qatar was the first Gulf country in which Israel opened a representative office in 1996, before it closed in 2000. Doha does not hide its contacts with Israel .
The small Gulf state also enjoys influence in the Gaza Strip, where last year, in cooperation with the United Nations and Egypt, it contributed to a calm between Israel and the Hamas movement that controls the strip. .
Political debate in Kuwait
Kuwait, another US ally, makes no known contact with Israel and continues to reject normalization in support of the Palestinian cause. There has been no official comment from Kuwait on the deal between the UAE and the Hebrew state, but it has opened a political discussion about it.
Political groups and civil society organizations denounced the deal, while others defended it. However, the normalization of relations with Israel seems exaggerated, according to Bianco, who points out that the Kuwaiti National Assembly has used “hostility towards Israel to gain its position as the voice of the people.”
After the dissemination of information that Sudan was moving towards the normalization of its relations with Israel, Khartoum excluded during Pompeo’s visit at the end of August recognition of Israel before the holding of elections in 2022. word of the Sudanese government quoted Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdok as saying in response to “the US demand to normalize relations with Israel,” The transitional government has no mandate (…) to decide on normalization with Israel . “
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