Gulf leaders praise Israel ties in closed-door meeting
Gulf officials showcased their hostility towards Iran and their affection for Israel at the Warsaw conference hosted by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office leaked and then deleted a video of a closed-door meeting at the conference showing officials from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates spewing invective against Iran and defending Israel.
Bahrain’s foreign minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa downplayed Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.
“We grew up talking about the Palestine-Israel dispute as the most important issue,” he said in the video. “But then at a later stage, we saw a bigger challenge. We saw a more toxic one, in fact the most toxic in our modern history, which came from the Islamic Republic, from Iran.”
UAE foreign minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan said that “Every nation has the right to defend itself when it’s challenged by another nation,” when asked about Israel’s military attacks on Syria.
Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir blamed Iran, not Israel, for the plight of the Palestinians.
“Who is supporting Hamas and Islamic Jihad and undercutting the Palestinian Authority?” he said, “Iran.”
While Gulf officials were making those comments on stage, Netanyahu was sitting in the audience.
There were no representatives from Iran or the Palestinian Authority at the conference.
Netanyahu returned to Israel boasting of the “unfathomable” friendly atmosphere he encountered in the Polish capital.
The prime minister told Israeli journalists that Arab leaders are more concerned with enmity towards Iran than they are with the Palestinian question.
Oman’s overt gestures
During the conference, Oman’s foreign minister Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah met with Netanyahu.
The Israeli government and media circulated a video showing Oman’s foreign minister arriving through the parking lot entrance of a Warsaw hotel for a secret meeting with the Israeli leader.
Netanyahu told bin Alawi that he speaks not only on behalf of Israel, but on behalf of “many people in the Middle East” in thanking Oman for its move towards normalization with Israel.
Bin Alawi also met with Israel’s former foreign minister Tzipi Livni at the Munich Security Conference on Friday.
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Livni has evaded legal proceedings in several countries in recent years in connection with war crimes in Gaza.
Last October, Netanyahu visited Oman in the most visible sign of Israel’s normalization of ties with Arab states with which it has no formal relations.
Bin Alawi nonetheless tried to downplay Oman’s brazen embrace of Israel.
“There is no normalization, but there is a continuation of the search for a peaceful solution to the Palestinian issue. As I mentioned, an independent and sovereign Palestinian state is a prerequisite for any normalization or any future relationship between the Arab region and Israel,” he said during a meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow.
Yemen’s public rejects normalization
During the Warsaw conference, Khaled Alyemany – the foreign minister in the exiled Yemeni government backed by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that are waging a war that his killed thousands of civilians in Yemen and caused the world’s worst humanitarian crisis there – was seated next to Netanyahu.
When Netanyahu’s microphone malfunctioned, Alyemany loaned him his.
Netanyahu then “joked about the new cooperation between Israel and Yemen,” according to Jason Greenblatt, US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, who enthused about the moment on Twitter.
