Many more secret talks with Arab leaders, says Benjamin Netanyahu
Israel is in secret talks with several Arab states on establishing ties, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says.
Israel is in secret talks with several Arab states on establishing ties, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said ahead of the Jewish state’s first commercial flight to the UAE afte a normalisation accord.
“There are many more unpublicised meetings with Arab and Muslim leaders to normalise relations with the state of Israel,” Mr Netanyahu said on Sunday (Monday AEST), without naming any countries.
A US-brokered agreement between Israel and Dubai to normalise ties was announced on August 13, making the United Arab Emirates the first Gulf country and only the third Arab nation to establish relations with Israel, after Egypt and Jordan.
The first commercial flight from Israel to the UAE on Monday was expected to carry a US-Israeli delegation led on the American side by White House adviser Jared Kushner, who stood next to Mr Netanyahu during his remarks on Sunday.
“Today’s breakthrough will become tomorrow’s norms,” the prime Minister said.
“It will pave the way for other countries to normalise their ties with Israel.”
Mr Netanyahu’s office said last week that National Security Adviser Meir Ben Shabbat would lead the Israeli delegation.
The talks in Abu Dhabi would seek ways to boost co-operation in areas including aviation, tourism, trade, health, energy and security.
Since the agreement between the UAE and Israel was unveiled, there have been frequent bilateral phone calls between ministers and the signing of commercial contracts.
On Saturday the Emirates repealed a 1972 law boycotting Israel. “It will be permissible to enter, exchange or possess Israeli goods and products of all kinds in the UAE and trade in them,” read a federal decree issued by UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week undertook a regional tour, which took him to Sudan, Bahrain and Oman, in the hope of convincing other countries in the region to follow the Emirates.
“While this peace agreement was thought to be impossible, the stage is now set for more,” Mr Kushner said of the Israel-UAE accord.
“What I felt over the last couple of weeks is a new sense of optimism, and we must seize that optimism and we must continue to push to make this region achieve the potential that it really has.”
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, who also met Mr Kushner on Sunday, called on “other Arab and Muslim states to follow this path of friendship and to establish full and warm relations with the State of Israel — peace between nations and peoples, peace for peace.”
As part of the normalisation agreement announced by US President Donald Trump, Israel agreed to suspend planned annexations in the occupied West Bank, although Mr Netanyahu quickly insisted the plans remained on the table.
The Palestinians dubbed the UAE’s agreement with Israel a “stab in the back”, as it opens the Arab world to the Jewish state while their own conflict remains unresolved.
Saudi Arabia, in keeping with decades of policy by most Arab states, says it will not follow the UAE’s example until Israel has signed a peace deal with the Palestinians establishing an independent Palestinian state.
AFP
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