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Israeli officials on Monday traveled to Bahrain to hash out the details of an interim normalization agreement following the signing of a “Declaration of Peace” last month at the White House. While hopes were high that a final deal would be quickly forged, internal discord within the leadership in Manama is reportedly delaying the process.
The Israeli delegation – headed by National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat – will be accompanied by a US team led by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, whose office in a statement said that the trip seeks “expanded economic cooperation” between Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
Jerusalem and Abu Dhabi signed a formal peace agreement on September 15 in Washington and have immediately moved to enhance bilateral cooperation in fields ranging from science and technology to banking and agriculture.
According to media reports, the Israelis and their Bahraini counterparts will sign a “Joint Communique,” effectively upgrading their diplomatic ties but stopping short of a comprehensive peace treaty.
Mnuchin and Trump Administration Middle East envoy Avi Berkowitz will then visit Abu Dhabi, and on Tuesday are slated to accompany the UAE’s first official delegation to the Jewish state.
Iranian officials boasted on Sunday that a United Nations arms embargo on the country had expired, as stipulated in the 2015 nuclear deal. “As of today, the Islamic Republic may procure any necessary arms and equipment from any source without any legal restrictions, and solely based on its defensive needs,” the Foreign Ministry posted to its Twitter account.
The development follows a failed attempt by the US at the Security Council – which was backed by Israel – to have the ban extended.
While US President Donald Trump in May 2018 withdrew from the nuclear pact, members of his administration argued that Washington was still technically a party to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and could therefore trigger “snapback” UN sanctions on Iran due to its publicly stated violation of terms in the agreement that placed restrictions on its nuclear program.
Both Russia and China have lined up to sell Tehran advanced conventional weapons to the tune of billions of dollars, a move Jerusalem vehemently opposes. Israeli leaders have long maintained that Iran will use such weaponry to bolster its military interventionism in places such as Syria, Iraq and Yemen, in addition to enhancing the arsenal of the Hezbollah terrorist organization in Lebanon.
Antisemitism Watch: Twitter is following in Facebook’s footsteps by banning all posts that deny or distort the Holocaust. “We strongly condemn antisemitism, and hateful conduct has absolutely no place on our service,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement. “… [We] take action against content that glorifies or praises historical acts of violence and genocide,” the missive added.
The move follows a concerted campaign by a multitude of organizations, including HonestReporting, to hold tech giants accountable for the promulgation of hate speech on their forums.
It also comes on the heels of numerous meetings between Israeli parliamentarians and representatives from TikTok geared toward stamping out antisemitism.
Many view as the heart of issue Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act, which allows social media companies to identify as “platforms” and not publishers, thereby ostensibly freeing them from responsibility for harmful third-party content disseminated on their sites.
Some pro-Israel observers are now waiting to see whether Twitter will bar Iranian leader Ali Khamenei, who regularly refers to the Jewish state as a “cancerous tumor” that must be extricated from the region.
HonestReporting Webinar: How Israel‘s New Peace Deals Are Reshaping the Middle East
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