US President Donald Trump on Friday announced a peace deal between Israel and Bahrain, which became the second Arab country to settle with its former foe over the past month, reinforcing an ambitious White House push to redraw the conflicts of the Middle East.
Calling it a “truly historic day,” Trump said that Israel and Bahrain were establishing full diplomatic and commercial relations.
“They will exchange embassies and ambassadors, begin direct flights between their countries and launch cooperation initiatives across a broad range of sectors, including health, business, technology, education, security and agriculture,” he told reporters.
Photo: Reuters
Bahrain said in a joint statement that it had agreed to formalize the deal with Israel at a ceremony on Tuesday in the White House, where the United Arab Emirates (UAE) would also sign off on its own thaw with Israel announced in the middle of last month.
Bahrain’s King Hamad, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump talked earlier on Friday before announcing the new breakthrough, the statement said.
Bahrain said that during the telephone call, the king “stressed the need to reach a just and comprehensive peace as a strategic option, in accordance with the two-state solution and relevant resolutions of international legitimacy.”
A senior official in the Bahraini capital, Manama, said the deal would boost regional “security, stability, prosperity.”
Until now, Israel has been able to strike just two peace accords with Arab countries — Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994 — and Trump is hoping that the diplomatic successes would give him badly needed momentum going into the Nov. 3 US presidential election.
At the White House, Trump celebrated, calling the progress “very, very important for not only the Middle East, but for the world.”
“When I took office the Middle East was in a state of absolute chaos,” Trump said.
In Jerusalem, Netanyahu hailed the agreement.
“Citizens of Israel, I am moved to be able to tell you that this evening, we are reaching another peace agreement with another Arab country, Bahrain. This agreement adds to the historic peace with the United Arab Emirates,” the Israeli leader said.
In the UAE, Hend al-Otaiba, director of strategic communications at the Bahraini Ministry of Foreign Affairs, sent congratulations to Bahrain and Israel.
“Today marks another significant and historic achievement, which will contribute enormously to the stability and prosperity of the region,” she said.
The Palestinians, who see Arab support as crucial to their limited power in resisting Israeli occupation, quickly condemned the Israel-Bahrain deal.
The agreement was “a stab in the back of the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people,” Ahmad Majdalani, social affairs minister in the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, told reporters.
Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, said it was an “aggression” that dealt “serious prejudice” to the Palestinian cause.
The government in Tehran, which supports Bahrain’s majority Shiite population, said the deal would further destabilize the region.
It said the deal made Bahrain a partner to the “crimes” of Israel, its regional arch foe.
It accused Israel of “decades of violence, slaughter, war, terror and bloodshed in oppressed Palestine and the region.”
“From now on, the rulers of Bahrain will be complicit in Israel’s murders as a source of constant threat to the region and the Islamic world,” the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement posted on its official Telegram channel.
Turkey yesterday joined Iran in condemning Bahrain’s move, saying that it would deal a fresh blow to efforts to defend the Palestinian cause.
“It will further encourage Israel to continue illegitimate practices toward Palestine and its efforts to make the occupation of Palestinian lands permanent,” it said.
Trump, who has made crushing sanctions and diplomatic pressure on Iran a priority of his administration, on Friday predicted that there would be a “very positive” development in the standoff with Tehran.
“I can see a lot of good things happening with respect to the Palestinians,” he added.
“As more countries normalize relations with Israel, which will happen quite quickly we believe, the region will become more and more stable, secure and prosperous,” he said.
“In the meantime, we’re pulling our soldiers out, so we’re doing it the opposite way. They were doing it with nothing but fighting and blood all over the place,” Trump said.
“The sand was loaded up with blood. And now we can see that a lot of that sand is going to be loaded up with peace,” he said.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg and Reuters
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