image source, @bahdiplomatic
Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Bahrain Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa
Hundreds of people are being killed every day in the war going on between Israel and Hamas for the last 28 days. Arab countries are very angry due to Israel’s bombing and blockade in Gaza.
On one hand, Iran is warning Israel of facing consequences and asking Muslim countries to unite, while many countries including Jordan have recalled their ambassadors from Israel.
Now another name has been added to this list. That is Bahrain.
According to news agency Reuters, Bahrain said on Thursday that its ambassador from Israel had returned and shortly before this the Israeli ambassador had left Bahrain.
According to the agency, it is not clear at the moment whether the economic relations between the two countries will continue or not, but Bahrain says that flights between the two countries have been suspended for several weeks.
According to news website Middle East Eye, Bahrain’s parliament published a statement on its website on Thursday.
In this statement, Bahrain has announced the recall of its ambassador. However, it is not clear in the statement whether the ambassador has left Israel or not.
According to the website, a spokesman for the lower house of Bahrain’s parliament said that amid the bombing of Gaza, economic cooperation with Israel will also be stopped.
image source, BBC
Referring to the King of Bahrain, the statement said that as before, Bahrain stands with Palestine.
According to ‘Middle East Eye’, it is currently not clear whether this step will be temporary or not. Apart from this, Bahrain’s Foreign Ministry has not commented on this matter.
in this matter Israel’s Foreign Ministry also issued a statement Is. The ministry said, “We would like to clarify that the Government of Bahrain and the Government of Israel have not taken any decision to send back ambassadors from the countries. “Relations between Israel and Bahrain are stable.”
Israel says that if diplomatic and economic relations are broken, it will be a big blow for it.
How honest are the Arab countries?
TS Tirumurti, who was India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, has written in the English newspaper The Hindu regarding India’s stand on the Israel-Hamas war, “India has always seen the solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis in the two-nation principle. . It is natural for India to be concerned about terrorist attacks inside Israel.
“When the Arab World was normalizing relations with Israel, India also did not ignore this line. The I2U2 group (India, Israel, UAE and US) confirms this line. It is important for India not only to be against terrorism but also to stand firm against the humanitarian tragedy in Gaza.
TS Tirumurti has written, “The West may be criticized for its hypocrisy and double standards in the Israel-Palestine crisis, but are the Arabs innocent in this matter? Are Arab countries not responsible for marginalizing the Palestinians? In the race to normalize relations with Israel, Arab countries, while talking about the issue of Palestinians, say that Israel has now agreed not to annex any more areas of Palestine. However, Israel has been doing just the opposite.
“The Israeli Prime Minister tries to make Iran the issue in West Asia and not Palestine. At present, the reaction of the Arab countries regarding Israel is to stop the protests on the streets in support of the Palestinians. Couldn’t the Gulf countries weaponize their oil to stop the Israeli attack on Gaza? Normalizing relations with Israel by ignoring the rights of Palestinians will not provide them security, that too when there is talk of forming a liberal government in the Gulf countries.
image source, Gettyimages
blow to abraham accord
According to Israel’s Foreign Ministry, at present it does not have diplomatic relations with 29 countries, which include many Islamic countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iraq, Malaysia and Afghanistan.
Till a few years ago, Bahrain’s name was also included in this list, but in the year 2020, with the mediation of America, UAE and Bahrain signed a historic agreement with Israel, which is called ‘Abraham Accord’.
Under this agreement, UAE and Bahrain normalized their relations with Israel and established diplomatic relations.
For this agreement, Israel had also postponed its plan to connect the settlements of the West Bank with Israel.
The Abraham Accords have a huge contribution in normalizing relations between Israel and Arab countries. With its help, America also strengthened its position in the Middle East.
Experts believe that taking this forward, America was making various efforts to start relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, but the Israel-Gaza war has put an end to all these efforts.
The reason for this is that Saudi Arabia does not consider Israel as a country. He believes that he has occupied the land of Palestinians.
In such a situation, the deterioration of Bahrain’s diplomatic relations with Israel is a big blow to the entire effort due to which Arab countries, forgetting their differences, came closer to Israel.
According to news website Al-Jazeera, in the past people in Bahrain have demonstrated outside the Israeli Embassy in support of Palestinians and demanded the cancellation of the agreement normalizing relations.
image source, GETTY IMAGES
Arab–Israel relations
The question is, how will the fighting in Gaza affect relations between Israel and its Arab partners in the long run?
The answer depends on how long this conflict will drag on and whether the number of casualties will continue to increase.
The Arab countries that have normalized relations with Israel know that they stand to gain a lot from this new friendship, especially in the field of technology. But this does not mean that Arab countries will want these benefits at the cost of increasing discontent on the domestic front.
For now, they would not like to show close relations with a country that is killing Palestinians, even if Hamas instigated it.
In practice, this means that bilateral talks will continue behind closed doors, as they have been for years. But the days of posing for photos together and addressing press conferences are probably over for now.
This post originally appeared on www.bbc.com