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Dubai (AFP)
Bahraini citizens who oppose the deal to establish diplomatic relations with Israel expressed their discontent on social media on Saturday, highlighting some of the complexities of the Gulf’s rapprochement with the Hebrew state.
Twitter users have exchanged the hashtag “Bahrainis against normalization” and “normalization is a betrayal” widely after US President Donald Trump announced the agreement between the two countries on Friday night.
Bahrain, the small Gulf kingdom, shares severe hostility with Israel toward Iran and is an ally of the US President’s administration and the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet.
Bahrain became the second Arab country in a month to announce an agreement to normalize relations with Israel, after the United Arab Emirates reached a similar agreement that promised significant gains in levels of security, trade and tourism.
Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdul Latif bin Rashid Al-Zayani said the agreement represented a “historic step” towards achieving peace in the Middle East, but the Palestinian Authority and Hamas condemned it and described it as “another stabbing. from the back “of an Arab state.
Unlike the United Arab Emirates, opposition to normalization is strong in Bahrain, which is populated by a mix of Sunnis and Shiites and has a long history of active civil society, even if it has been harshly dealt with in the last decade.
Former Bahraini MP Ali Al-Aswad wrote that it is “a black day in the history of Bahrain.”
Sandwiched between two regional rivals, Saudi Arabia and Iran, the kingdom has seen waves of unrest since 2011, when security forces quelled Shiite-led protests demanding reforms.
Since then, hundreds of citizens have been jailed and some of them stripped of citizenship due to what the government describes as “terrorism” linked to Iran. Protests are extremely rare and security forces are faced with harsh measures.
The authorities dissolved the two main opposition groups, the Shiite “Al-Wefaq”, which was the largest bloc in parliament until 2011, and the secular National Society for Democratic Action, Waad, due to allegations of links to “terrorism. “.
Both are deprived of representation in Parliament, while Al-Wefaq leader Sheikh Ali Salman has been in prison since 2014.
Al-Wefaq harshly criticized the normalization agreement, saying on Twitter: “We stress that the agreement between the authoritarian regime of Bahrain and the Zionist occupation government is a total betrayal of Islam and Arabism and a departure from the Islamic, Arab consensus. and national “.
Hussein Al-Daihi, Deputy Secretary General of the Al-Wefaq Association considered that normalization confirms that these regimes represent a threat to their countries and peoples and the nation by implementing subversive agendas against the interests of our Arab and Islamic countries and their peoples.
And anti-normalization groups at home and abroad criticized the agreement and issued statements that considered the measure “flawed.”
© 2020 AFP
