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A senior Palestinian official harshly criticized Bahrain on Saturday for its decision to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, saying it had betrayed the Palestinian cause.
Dr. Saeb Erekat also accused Trump of preparing for “the confrontation of the century” should a military alliance be created between Israel and some Arab countries.
The militant group Hamas also rejected on Saturday the US-brokered agreement establishing formal ties between Israel and Bahrain.
For the first time in more than a quarter century, a US president will stage a signing ceremony between Israelis and Arabs at the White House, calling it a historic diplomatic breakthrough in a region long defined by deep-rooted conflicts.
But while the lens of Tuesday’s event will evoke the groundbreaking agreements that ended decades of war between Israel and neighboring Egypt and Jordan, and launched the modern peace process with the Palestinians, the reality is quite different.
Israel will normalize relations with the United Arab Emirates, a US ally with whom it has never gone to war, formalizing ties that date back several years.
The agreement consolidates an informal alliance against Iran, a mutual enemy, while leaving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians as intractable as ever.
That hasn’t stopped President Donald Trump from referring to the deal, which was announced last month, as a “historic peace deal” and stating that “everyone said this would be impossible.”
The agreement to normalize relations with the small island nation in the Gulf of Bahrain, announced on Friday, also formalizes long-standing ties.
Bahrain received an Israeli cabinet minister on an official visit in 1994 and last year hosted a conference in the Middle East that was boycotted by the Palestinians.
The deal with Bahrain has raised the possibility that Saudi Arabia, the ultimate prize in Israel’s normalization drive, could follow suit.
Bahrain’s Sunni monarchy is closely allied with Saudi Arabia, which helped quell a popular uprising of its Shiite majority in 2011.
Saudi Arabia has quietly accepted the deal with the United Arab Emirates, opening its airspace to the first commercial flight between Israel and Abu Dhabi.
But for at least the last three decades, Israel’s main conflict has been not with its Arab neighbors, but with the Palestinians, who may soon outnumber Jews in the territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.
The Trump administration hopes that as more Arab countries follow the lead of the United Arab Emirates and normalize ties with Israel, it will pressure the Palestinians to return to peace negotiations, which were halted more than a decade ago.
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