US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is due in Jerusalem on Monday for talks on the normalization agreement announced between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and even its possible extension to other Arab countries, according to diplomatic sources.
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Pompeo is due to visit after Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan as part of a tour of the Middle East, the same sources said on Sunday.
In Jerusalem, he will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the Washington-sponsored normalization agreement between Israel and the Emirates, the first Gulf country to establish official relations with the Hebrew state.
Israel signed peace agreements with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994), two neighbors with which it had been at war.
Thanks to standardization, Israel and the Emirates have said they want to increase trade, the sale of Emirati oil to Israel, and Israeli technology to the Emirates, in addition to boosting the tourism sector with the key to flight projects. direct between Tel Aviv and Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
Mr. Netanyahu said he wanted the flights to pass through Saudi Arabia’s airspace, which should require talks. Riyadh has ruled out any agreement with Israel before a peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians.
“Change the trajectory”
The Emirates assure that the agreement reached with the Jewish state provides for “ending any further annexation” of areas in the West Bank, Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967. But Mr. Netanyahu said that the annexation was simply “postponed. “.
This annexation is provided for in US President Donald Trump’s plan announced in January for a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The plan also provides for cooperation between Israel and Arab countries hostile to Iran, the sworn enemy of the Hebrew state.
After the announcement on August 13 of the agreement between Israel and Abu Dhabi, the Palestinian leadership denounced a “stab in the back”, the Emirates having normalized ties with the Hebrew state without prior Israeli-Palestinian peace.
But normalization “will make it possible to change the trajectory of the region from a past of hostility and conflict, to one of hope, peace and prosperity”, pleaded the Ambassador of the Emirates in Washington, Youssef al- Otaïba, in a letter in Hebrew published on Friday in the Yediot Aharonot, the best-selling newspaper in Israel.
But he also warned that “difficulties” could appear on the horizon, but without calling into question standardization.
No F-35?
One subject is particularly sensitive for Israel: the possible sale of F-35 fighter jets to the Emirates by the United States.
The Emirates have around 60 Mirage 2000s, a multi-purpose fighter jet, but according to the New York Times the Trump administration has “stepped up” its offensive to sell new generation F-35s to the Emirates in the wake of its merger with Israel.
Historically, Israel has opposed the sale of F-35s to other countries in the Middle East, including Jordan and Egypt, because it wants to maintain its technological superiority in the region.
Netanyahu argued that the deal with the Emirates, concluded under the auspices of the United States, did not include a clause for the sale of F-35s to the Gulf country.
“The Emiratis say there was a promise, Israel says no (…), but there are arrangements that can be made to satisfy Israel,” Joshua Teitelbaum, a Gulf specialist in the United States, told AFP. Israeli Bar-Ilan University, citing behind-the-scenes deals to facilitate the sale of F-15s to Saudi Arabia and the Hebrew state.
Since the agreement with the Emirates, speculation has been rife on other possible candidates for normalization with Israel: Bahrain, Oman, or even Sudan?
The Palestinians, from the secular Fatah of Mahmoud Abbas to the Islamists of Hamas, are trying to mobilize regional powers like Turkey and Saudi Arabia, even Iran and Qatar, to block normalization.