Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday held his first meeting with the new Emirati Ambassador to Israel, Mohammad Mahmoud Al Khajah, following the normalization agreement between the Jewish state and the United Arab Emirates.
“We are changing the Middle East, we are changing the world,” Netanyahu told Al Khajah.
The two discussed “the potential in developing joint regional and bilateral projects in a broad range of fields,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement.
The Emirati envoy will spend several days in the country, scouting out suitable locations for the embassy and his personal residence. Al Khajah will then return at a later date on a more permanent basis.
Abu Dhabi was the first country to agree to establish full diplomatic relations with Jerusalem under the Abraham Accords, a pact brokered by former US president Donald Trump. Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco thereafter followed suit.
In January, Israel opened and embassy in the UAE, with veteran diplomat Eitan Naeh heading the mission.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz has revealed that Israel intends to develop a “special security arrangement” with Gulf Arab allies that share common concerns over Iran.
“I don’t think it’s going to be a defense pact,” Gantz qualified, “but we are going to develop defense [ties] with every country that we have relations with.”
When asked about Israel’s position on the US’s potential sale of F-35 fighter jets to the UAE, a deal currently being reviewed by the Biden Administration, the Israeli defense minister insisted that Washington must preserve the Jewish state’s qualitative military edge.”
For the third time over the past year, Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi met with his Jordanian counterpart Ayman Safadi. The meeting took place at the Allenby border crossing between the two countries.
Amman’s top diplomat urged Israel to recommit to a two-state solution and jump-start peace negotiations with the Palestinians. Ashkenazi and Safadi also discussed regional matters and future collaboration in the fields of water management, tourism and the economy.
Safadi said that Jerusalem’s newly established relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco cannot be a substitute for making peace with the Palestinians.
Earlier this week, Defense Minister Benny Gantz said that he had three months ago secretly held security talks with Jordanian King Abdullah II in Amman. “I have a continuous and ongoing connection with the Jordanian king and other senior Jordanian officials, and I know we can have great achievements,” Gantz was quoted as saying.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) has admitted that it used scarce coronavirus vaccines to immunize senior officials, Jordanian royals and members of the Palestinian national soccer team. The move has angered many Palestinians, as the PA had previously said that its Health Ministry would inoculate health workers and high-risk groups first.
Some 10 percent of the 12,000 doses that the West Bank received from Israel and Russia were given to Palestinian VIPs, a statement by the Ministry confirmed. Another 200 doses went to the Jordanian royal court, after Amman requested vaccines from Ramallah.
Earlier this week, critical Palestinian NGOs demanded that the PA provide more information about its vaccination program, saying that it was not transparent.
In response, the PA claimed that those who received the vaccines were “in direct contact with the president and the prime minister.” Apparently, the entire football team needed to be vaccinated because its was slated to play a match abroad.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has long faced corruption accusations. In a December 2020 poll, almost 90 percent of Palestinians questioned said they viewed PA institutions as corrupt.
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