The US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinkenand his counterparts Israel and four Arab countries meet today for the first time on Israeli soil to discuss peace in Middle East and Iranian nuclear program.
The summit is being held in Sde Boker, a kibbutz in the Negev desert in southern Israel, a day after an attack for which the Islamic State claimed responsibility and which cost the lives of two police officers in Chandera.
At the beginning of his tour last Sunday, Blinken met with the Israeli Prime Minister in Jerusalem. Naftali Bennett and then with the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in the occupied West Bank. Then, according to the Athenian-Macedonian News Agency, he had dinner in St. Boker with his counterparts from Israel, Egypt, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco, four Arab countries that normalized relations with Israel.
Earlier today o Bennett announced that it was found positive in covid-19. “The prime minister is feeling well and will continue to work according to his schedule from home,” his office said in a statement.
The State Department later said that Blinken was the only member of the US delegation who had “close contact” with Bennett, adding that the US Secretary of State was following the recommendations: “he wears a mask and undergoes the necessary tests”.
“Did you forget someone?”
Team held yesterday demonstration outside the hotel where Blinken and his counterparts are staying, holding a banner that read in Hebrew, Arabic and English. “Did you forget someone?”, In a reference to the Palestinians.
The Palestinian side, from Abbas’s Fatah movement to Hamas Islamists, criticized the normalization of relations between Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Israel in 2020, saying that this should not happen until after the Israeli-Palestinian settlement conflict.
Although the Palestinians are not attending the summit in the Negev, King Abdullah II of Jordan is scheduled to meet with Abbas in Ramallah.
THE Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace agreement with Israel in 1979, followed in 1994 by Jordan.
Abbas denounced “the two meters and two weights” of the West yesterday, Sunday, who, he said, rushed to invoke international law to impose sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukrainebut have not done the same against Israel for its “crimes” in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The Sunder Boker summit will focus on the revival of the 2015 agreement on Iran’s nuclear program.
The United States and Iran are in the final stages of indirect negotiations to revive this agreement, following the unilateral withdrawal of Washington in 2018.
But Blinken assured yesterday that the United States is “determined” to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Israel, considered by experts to be the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons, accuses Iran of trying to acquire nuclear weapons, something Tehran denies.
Jihadist attack
Blinken’s visit to Israel was marred by an attack last Sunday night in Khandera that killed two Israeli policemen, Jazen Fallah and Sirel Abukarat, both 19 years old. Many people were injured in the attack.
Police killed the two perpetrators, two Israeli Arabs, and arrested five suspects. The attack was welcomed by the Palestinian movements Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as well as the Lebanese Hezbollah.
Source: News Beast
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