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Regional Cooperation Minister Issawi Frej predicted Saturday that Israel will signal normalization agreements with further Arab states within the coming 12 months.
“A number of regional states are ready to signal agreements, and Israel is in contact with nearly each state within the area,” the Kan public broadcaster quoted Frej as having stated throughout an onstage interview in Ra’anana.
Frej didn’t provide the title of any particular nation on the docket.
Throughout his ultimate 12 months in workplace, then-United States president Donald Trump’s administration coaxed the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco to signal normalization agreements with Israel, in what turned generally known as the Abraham Accords.
Sudan additionally agreed to such a deal, but it surely was by no means finalized and the method was seemingly sophisticated on account of final month’s coup by the navy, which had been the driving pressure behind the hassle.
Oman has lengthy been touted as one of many subsequent international locations to doubtlessly forge diplomatic ties with the Jewish state. It hosted then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2018, was fast to specific its support for the normalization agreements Israel signed with the UAE and Bahrain and despatched a representative to an Israeli occasion in New York marking the one-year anniversary of the accords’ signing in September.
US officers instructed The Instances of Israel earlier this 12 months that the Trump administration had Indonesia and Mauritania lined as much as be the following Muslim international locations to normalize relations with Israel, however ran out of time.
Israel’s chargé d’affaires in Bahrain was seen speaking with Indonesia’s protection minister on Saturday in a uncommon public interplay between officers from the 2 international locations.
Inside Minister Ayelet Shaked told ToI earlier this week that increasing the Abraham Accords would require the US to supply its personal incentives to candidate international locations.
“There’s a variety of potential, however quite a bit relies on the affect of the [Biden] administration,” she stated throughout an interview in Hebrew. “Ultimately, these international locations make peace, not solely as a result of they’ve an curiosity in making peace with Israel, but additionally as a result of they’ve an curiosity [vis a vis] the US.”
And whereas Jerusalem needed to forgo plans to annex massive elements of the West Financial institution to set the accords in movement, no additional Israeli gestures to the Palestinians can be crucial with a view to construct on the present normalization agreements, the senior minister argued.
Frej, the one Arab minister within the authorities, was tapped with heading the Regional Cooperation Ministry when the coalition was fashioned 4 months in the past. The workplace has lengthy been considered as redundant given the Overseas Ministry’s related portfolios, however Frej has insisted that he’ll make it related in increasing business contacts with the Palestinian Authority and the Arab world.
Additionally throughout Saturday’s interview, Frej stated that Israel and the Palestinians erred in not capitalizing on the success of the Oslo Accords, which had been signed with the Palestinian Authority within the Nineteen Nineties.
“Normalization agreements with Arab states prior to now 12 months wanted to incorporate the Palestinians,” Kan quoted Frej as having stated.
The Palestinian Authority lambasted the Abraham Accords as a “stab within the again” and Ramallah’s relations with the international locations that signed them noticed a fraying consequently.
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