Sunday, February 17, 2019

Hamas takes control of Gaza goods crossing with Israel

Hamas suspects that PA employees have allowed Israel to transfer technological equipment used for espionage into Gaza

Truck carrying goods to Palestinians arrives at crossing in southern Gaza Strip (AFP/file photo)

17 February 2019

Gaza's Islamist rulers Hamas took control of the Palestinian side of the enclave's main goods crossing with Israel, the strip's interior ministry and an official news agency said on Sunday.

According to sources in Gaza, Hamas suspects that PA employees have allowed Israel to transfer technological equipment used for espionage into territory controlled by the group, Haaretz reported.

Since a botched Israeli operation in Gaza last November, Hamas has increased security checks at the crossing, Haaretz said. One of the collaborators, according to Hamas, admitted to receiving GPS equipment used in the operation with the help of a PA official.

Hamas seized the Gaza Strip in 2007 in a near civil war with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas's Fatah party. Still, it agreed to hand control of the crossings to the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in 2017, as part of a since-failed reconciliation attempt between the two parties.

The PA administration at the goods crossing said on Sunday that Hamas had "expelled employees and banned them from entering the crossing", AFP reported.

Known to Israelis as Kerem Shalom and to Palestinians as the Kerem Abu Salem, the crossing in the south of poverty-hit enclave has been a lifeline for Gazans, who have lived under a crippling Israeli blockade for more than a decade.

Hamas confirmed that PA employees had left the crossing.

Security forces "put in place procedures dictated by security imperatives", Gaza's interior ministry spokesman Iyad al-Bozum said in a statement.

"Palestinian Authority employees at the crossing have refused to cooperate on these procedures for a few days and today we were surprised by their departure," he added.

Haaretz reported that Hamas demanded PA officials undergo questioning and background checks, including fingerprinting.

Hamas said goods continued to pass through the crossing as normal.

Palestinians furious and fed up with corruption of Abbas's 'mafia' PA

The Israeli defence ministry body responsible for Palestinian civil affairs, COGAT, said "trucks were going through" into Gaza as usual.

Last month, Gaza's only crossing with Egypt was partially closed for 20 days after PA employees withdrew from the border point, accusing Hamas of interference.

Hamas employees quickly retook control of the Rafah crossing, the only way for Palestinians to leave the enclave that bypasses Israel.

Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza, including Hamas, have fought three wars since 2008.

Tensions have risen again since last March as Palestinians have gathered at least weekly along the border with Israel for protests, calling for an end to the blockade.

Israeli forces killed 254 Palestinians, including 47 children, in the Gaza protests in 2018, the United Nations office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a report that came out in late January.

Another 23,603 Palestinians have been wounded over that same period of time, OCHA said. Two Israeli soldiers have also been killed since then.

Clashes on Sunday

Nineteen Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were wounded on Sunday during clashes in the northern Gaza Strip, the Israeli army and Palestinian medical sources said.

"IDF (Israeli army) soldier injured when an explosive device was thrown during Gaza riots on Israel's border fence," the army said on Twitter.

It added that Israeli tanks struck "two Hamas military posts in Gaza in response to the explosive device".

In Gaza, the health ministry and Hamas said 19 Palestinians were wounded by live ammunition during the clashes.

Pakistan Has No More Excuses for Supporting Terrorism

A murderous attack in Kashmir rocks relationships throughout Asia.

Vehicles burn along a road during a protest in Jammu on Feb. 15, the day after an attack on a Central Reserve Police Force convoy in Pulwama, Kashmir. (Rakesh Bakshi/AFP/Getty Images)

BY DHRUVA JAISHANKAR

| FEBRUARY 15, 2019, 11:28 AM
On the afternoon of Thursday, Feb. 14, a massive explosion rocked a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) convoy in Pulwama in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. At least 40 personnel belonging to the CRPF—a 300,000-strong paramilitary force under the Ministry of Home Affairs involved in law-and-order and counterterrorism duties—were killed as a suicide bomber drove an SUV reportedly loaded with about 600 pounds of explosives into their bus. Jaish-e-Mohammed, a terrorist organization based in Pakistan, has claimed responsibility for the attack, and the group’s role has been confirmed by Indian officials. The assault comes weeks before India’s general elections, which are expected to be held in March and April.

The next morning, India’s Cabinet Committee on Security—consisting of the prime minister and four senior ministers—held an emergency meeting and, as a first step, announced the revocation of “most favored nation” trading status for Pakistan. India had granted this status to Pakistan in 1996, although Pakistan had never reciprocated. But this is just one of the retaliatory measures likely to be taken after the worst act of Islamist terrorism in India since the Mumbai attacks in 2008.

Culpability for the attacks is unambiguous. For decades, Islamist terrorists belonging to groups like Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba have benefited from recruitment, financing, training, and other forms of support provided by Pakistan’s security establishment. Groups targeting India and Afghanistan continue to operate with relative impunity inside Pakistan, which has only cracked down on militancy against the Pakistani state. In Jammu and Kashmir, cross-border infiltration has been facilitated by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate—its primary external intelligence agency, run by the military—and the Pakistan Army, which provides cover in the form of artillery and gun fire across the Line of Control separating Indian- and Pakistani-held territory.

Despite the highs and lows in India-Pakistan relations over the past two decades, there is no evidence that Pakistan has made serious attempts at dismantling this terrorist infrastructure. Although the frequency ebbs and flows, cross-border infiltrations continue on a regular basis: Most of these terrorists are quickly stopped or neutralized by Indian security forces, and those attacks that have been successful—including the one at Uri in 2016—have generally benefited from negligence or a good deal of luck. Given that Jaish-e-Mohammed claimed responsibility for Pulwama, and the group operates openly on its soil, Pakistan cannot rely, as it has in the past, on ambiguity and plausible deniability to deflect responsibility for this attack.

Pulwama marks an extension of recent trends concerning terrorism in India. Despite several high-profile incidents in recent years, the frequency and severity of terrorism in the country have witnessed a steady decline since 2002 and are well below the highs of the 1990s. More than 1,000 civilians were killed in terrorist attacks each year in India between 2005 and 2008. That has dropped to about 200 annually since 2015. In Jammu and Kashmir alone, civilian and security fatalities from terrorism declined—largely as a result of international pressure and improved security—from an estimated 1,700 in 2001 to 285 in 2007 and 33 in 2012. The numbers have subsequently climbed back up to 181 last year, in part as a consequence of agitations in the Kashmir Valley after July 2016 and Pakistan’s decision to try to take advantage of the situation.

The nature of terrorism in India has seen fundamental shifts over this period. Between 2000 and 2008, as violence in Jammu and Kashmir steadily declined, Islamist terrorist attacks began to occur with alarming frequency in major Indian cities. The fatalities mounted, with between 20 and 200 killed in attacks in Mumbai in 2003; New Delhi in 2005; Varanasi and Mumbai in 2006; Hyderabad in 2007; and Jaipur, Ahmedabad, New Delhi, and Mumbai in 2008. Another spate of smaller attacks occurred between 2010 and 2013 in Pune, Mumbai, New Delhi, and Hyderabad.

But since that time, the targets have shifted to primarily military and security facilities and away from major civilian and population centers. This, presumably, was intended by Pakistan to minimize international attention and censure and project such acts of terrorism as part of an unconventional military campaign. Thus, an Indian Air Force base was the target at Pathankot in January 2016, and an Indian Army post was attacked at Uri later that year. India responded to the latter incident with a series of coordinated retributive attacks across the Line of Control, which became known in India as “surgical strikes.” With an assault on the CRPF convoy, the trend continues.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan rose to power with support from the country’s powerful army. Like his predecessor, Nawaz Sharif, he has attempted to internationalize the Kashmir issue, in part to cater to various domestic constituencies. If there was any expectation that Imran’s elevation might offer India the opportunity to turn a new leaf on the relationship, that will now diminish, no matter what the outcome of the forthcoming Indian general election.

But the attack also has implications for Afghanistan, where India is already nervous about a probable U.S. military drawdown. Jaish-e-Mohammed has old connections to the Taliban and al Qaeda. In 1999, Masood Azhar, the leader of Jaish-e-Mohammed, was released from Indian custody as part of a hostage exchange in Taliban-controlled Kandahar, following the hijacking of an Indian Airlines aircraft with 173 passengers and 15 crew on board. From Taliban-controlled territory, he was whisked back to Pakistan, where he returned to the business of terrorism. His organization was soon involved in the December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament, which resulted in a massive Indian military mobilization the following year against Pakistan.

This standoff provided a pretext for Pakistan to move military assets away from its western frontier to its eastern border with India, a move that enabled the exfiltration of Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders from the caves of Tora Bora in Afghanistan into Pakistan. This history has resonance today, as the United States engages in negotiations with the Taliban on the future of Afghanistan. Pulwama underscores the continued dangers for India of terrorist safe havens in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and New Delhi is unlikely to be persuaded by the ongoing attempts to normalize the Taliban and its sponsors.

The story goes even further than that. India has been trying to rally international efforts to have Azhar listed as an international terrorist by the United Nations. While its efforts have been supported by the United States, United Kingdom, and France, they have been repeatedly blocked by China. China’s obduracy further exposes Beijing’s double standards: While China points to Islamist terrorism to justify imprisoning more than a million Uighurs in camps in its western region of Xinjiang, it continues to protect Pakistan on terrorism. Pulwama may generate further Indian skepticism about China’s bona fides at a time when Beijing was hoping for a continued thaw in relations.

With the Indian elections around the corner, there is also a domestic angle. The Narendra Modi government has highlighted the decline of terrorist incidents on its watch, and that certainly applies to major urban centers and the country as a whole. But violence in Jammu and Kashmir has picked up somewhat since 2016, with India’s security forces continuing to bear the brunt of it. It seems irresponsible to try to predict what retributive actions may follow in the coming days, weeks, and months. For now, largely leaving aside overt partisanship, India’s leaders have been united in standing behind the country’s security services.

Dhruva Jaishankar is Fellow in Foreign Policy Studies at Brookings India in New Delhi and the Brookings Institution in Washington DC. He is also a Non-Resident Fellow with the Lowy Institute in Australia.

India enacts reprisals against Pakistan after Kashmir bombing

Government places tariff on imports while revenge attacks against Kashmiris have been reported

People shout anti-Pakistan slogans as they burn Pakistani flags and kites following the Kashmir bombing. Photograph: Raminder Pal Singh/EPA

Michael Safi in Delhi and Azhar Farooq - @safimichael-Sun 17 Feb 2019 12.28 GMT

India has announced reprisals against Pakistan for a suicide bombing that killed at least 40 paramilitaries in the disputed region of Kashmir.

India’s finance minister, Arun Jaitley, has placed a 200% tariff on Pakistani imports and the home ministry announced on Sunday it was withdrawing the security details of a several Kashmiri separatist leaders.

A car laden with explosives driven by a member of the Pakistan-based militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, is believed to have been responsible for the deadliest attack in the history of Kashmir’s 30-year insurgency on Thursday.

Ceremonies have been held in the capital, Delhi, and across the country to farewell the dead as public anger continues to boil. “The fire that is raging in your hearts, is in my heart too,” the prime minister, Narendra Modi, told an audience in Bihar state on Sunday.

India’s home ministry has also directed police to protect Kashmiris studying or working in states across India following reports of revenge attacks including attempts to storm a female students’ hostel in the northern city of Dehradun.

Authorities cut mobile internet in Kashmir and roads and markets were deserted on Sunday as residents observed a general strike to protest the vigilante violence.

Soldiers and paramilitaries stationed in the region were on high alert and a new protocol was in force banning civilian cars from driving near convoys of security personnel.

In Jammu, the region adjacent to Kashmir, several thousand people have been stranded for the past four days and been placed in a relief camp. A curfew has been established in the area after arson attacks on Kashmiri homes. Mohammad Akram, a volunteer at a relief camp in Jammu, said more than 3,000 Kashmiri Muslims were being provided shelter and food.

“More people who were stranded at hotels are coming and some are leaving for Kashmir during the night,” he told the Guardian.

At a cricket club in Mumbai, a portrait of Pakistan’s prime minister Imran Khan – one of several pictures of cricketers hanging in the premises – was covered “as a mark of protest”, the club president told India’s Press Trust International.

Thursday’s bombing has raised tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours to their highest point since the September 2016 attack by Jaish-e-Mohammed on an army camp in Uri, a town near Kashmir’s ceasefire border.

That incident killed 19 people and led India to announce it had sent army teams into Pakistani-held territory to destroy militant camps, an operation labelled the “surgical strikes” and celebrated in a blockbuster film released this year.

Modi has promised to avenge the suicide attack and says his security forces have been given full freedom to respond. But despite the strong rhetoric, India’s options are limited, said Paul Staniland, an associate professor in political science at the University of Chicago.

Sending troops deep into Pakistani-held territory would risk escalating a conflict where nuclear weapons have been in play on both sides since 1998, as well exposing Indian soldiers to capture or warplanes to being shot down.

More likely, he said, was a similar small-scale attack along the lines of the 2016 surgical strikes, but this time accompanied something like a precision-guided munition attack.

“It moves slightly beyond the response to Uri and lets Modi say he’s not just doing the exact same thing again, but doesn’t open the door to hard-to-predict escalation dynamics,” Staniland said.

But such an attack would be unlikely dissuade Pakistan from continuing to allow armed groups to operate on its territory, he added. “India might need to really move up the escalation ladder to impose costs, but that in turn creates bigger risks that Indian governments thus far have decided were ultimately not worth it.”

Must the president be a moral leader?

by Michael Blake- Feb 16, 2019

The best presidents – including figures such as Abraham Lincoln and George Washington – are celebrated not only as good leaders, but as good men. They embody not simply political skill, but personal virtue. Why, though, should anyone expect a president to demonstrate that sort of virtue? If someone is good at the difficult job of political leadership, must they demonstrate exceptional moral character as well?

Character and democracy

Voters disagree about the extent to which the president must demonstrate moral leadership. Scholars who study political ethics disagree as well.

Those who insist that the president must be virtuous often begin with the thought that a person in that office will face new and unanticipated problems during his or her term. A president whose decision-making is informed by a consistent character, will, in the face of new challenges, rely upon the lessons that have built that character.

As scholar James David Barber wrote, the best way to understand a president’s likely responses to a crisis is to understand what that president values most highly.

Abraham Lincoln, for instance, consistently and publicly referred to the same set of moral values throughout his life – values centered on a deep, while imperfect, belief in the moral equality of people. These principles provided him with guidance throughout the horrors of the Civil War.

A president whose decisions are not grounded in the right sort of ethical values may be less well-equipped to respond well – and, more importantly, might be frighteningly unpredictable in his or her responses.

Other political ethicists have emphasized the ways in which democracies can fall apart in the absence of personal virtue. Conservative thinkers, in particular, have argued that political institutions can only function when all those who participate within them are capable of compromise and of self-government. Rules, to put it simply, don’t work unless people governed by those rules care about them and voluntarily choose to abide by them.

If this is true of citizens, it is even more true of the president, whose opportunities to damage the system through unprincipled actions are so much greater.

Vice and efficiency

These arguments have been met with powerful objections. Political philosophers – including, most prominently, Niccolò Machiavelli – have argued that the nature of political life requires a willingness to demonstrate habits of character that would ordinarily be understood as vices. The good leader, insisted Machiavelli, is morally right to do what is usually taken as wrong. He or she must be cruel, deceptive and often violent.

The philosopher Arthur Applbaum refers to this as role morality. What a person is right to do, argues Applbaum, often depends upon the job that person is doing. The good lawyer, for instance, may have to bully, browbeat or humiliate hostile witnesses. That is what a zealous defense might require. Machiavelli notes simply that, in a hostile and brutal world, political leaders might have similar reasons to do what is usually forbidden.

Modern philosophers such as Michael Walzer have continued this line of reasoning. If the world is imperfect, and requires a politician to lie, cheat or otherwise do wrong in the name of doing good, then there is sometimes a moral reason for the politician to do that wrong.

George Washington, for example, was quite happy to engage in deception, if that deception would help protect the United States. He consistently sought to deceive his adversaries about his intentions and his resources – and, importantly, sought to deceive his own subordinates, reasoning that a lie must be believed at home for it to be useful abroad.

A president who refused to engage in this sort of deception, argues Walzer, would be choosing to keep his or her conscience clear, instead of providing some genuine and concrete help to others. Walzer’s conclusion is that a good political agent must often refuse to be a good person. It is only by sometimes doing what is ordinarily wrong, that the politician can make the world better for all.

Virtue, vice and the presidency

These ideas have, of course, been a part of many long-standing debates about presidential morality. Henry Kissinger, for instance, defended the Nixon administration’s decision to seek the firing of the special prosecutor, based upon the need for that administration to present itself to the Soviet Union as both powerful and unified.

It was not necessary, Kissinger wrote later, that the American leadership displayed personal virtue. It was enough that their decisions enabled a society in which the American people were capable of demonstrating that virtue.

More recently, many evangelical supporters of President Trump have used the Biblical story of Cyrus the Great, an ancient Persian king, to explain their continued support for the president. Although Cyrus was not himself Jewish, he chose to free the Jews held as slaves in Babylon. Evangelical leader Mike Evans noted that that Cyrus, like Donald Trump, was an “imperfect vessel,” whose decisions nevertheless made it possible for others to live as God wished them to.

So, too, some evangelicals argue that President Trump’s own seeming lapses of virtue might not disqualify him from the presidency – so long as his decisions enable others to lead lives exemplifying the virtues he does not always show himself.

Effective vice

These debates – between those who seek a president who models ethical virtue, and those who would regard that desire as misguided at best – are likely to continue.

One thing that must be acknowledged, however, is that even the best defenses of presidential vice cannot be taken to excuse all forms of moral failure.

Machiavelli, and those who follow him, can at most be used to defend a president whose vices are effectively able to create a more ethical world for others. Not all sorts of wrongdoing, though, can plausibly be thought to have these effects.

Some vices, such as an outsized confidence, or the will to use violence in the name of justice, may be defended with reference to the ideas of Machiavelli or Walzer.

Other ethical failings, however – such as a vindictive desire to punish perceived enemies – often seem less likely to lead to good results. This sort of failure, however, appears to be common among those who have sought the presidency. It is a failure, moreover, that does not depend upon party affiliation.

In recent years, for example, both Lyndon Baines Johnson and Richard Nixon took particular delight in humiliating and degrading their political adversaries. Both, perhaps, might have been better leaders, had they been more reflective about when and how to wrong.

In presidential politics, all parties might at least agree on this much: If there is sometimes a reason to seek an ethically flawed president, it does not follow that all ethical flaws are equally worth defending.

Michael Blake, Professor of Philosophy, Public Policy, and Governance, University of Washington

Gulf states’ warm, secret embrace of Israel exposed

Despite bumps in the road, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan has nurtured close ties with Israel. Abu Dhabi Crown Prince CourtWikipedia

Tamara Nassar - 14 February 2019

The Jerusalem Post published two letters in recent weeks directly addressing the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The first, published in mid-January, is penned by Meidan Bar, chair of the Israeli Airline Pilots Association.

Bar, who was a pilot in the Israeli air force, invited Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman to visit Israel and send a Saudi delegation to an Israeli aviation conference in May.

The second, written by Joel Rosenberg, a Christian Zionist and US-Israeli dual citizen, invites Abu Dhabi crown prince Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan to visit Israel.

In November, Rosenberg led a delegation of Christian evangelicals and pro-Israel American figures to Riyadh to meet Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.

Whether Abu Dhabi’s Mohamed bin Zayed will take up Rosenberg’s invitation is unclear, but it would not be the first time the crown prince would speak with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Rift in covert relations

According to a report by Barak Ravid for Israel’s Channel 10, the two leaders spoke by phone several times between 2015 and 2016, following years of covert relations between the two countries.

This includes intelligence collaboration against Iran, arms sales and technology exchanges.

Ravid traces the history of the collaboration back a decade, when the failure of a secret arms deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates led to a two-year rift in covert relations.

In February 2009, Israel lobby stalwart and former US “peace process” diplomat Dennis Ross, UAE ambassador to Washington Yousef Al Otaiba and Israeli ambassador Sallai Meridor met in secret at a Washington hotel, Ravid reported.

Al Otaiba and Meridor wanted to convey their countries’ mutual concern to Ross over the Obama administration’s intention to open dialogue with Iran.

“There was concern, anxiety, and common interests between Israel and the Arab countries regarding Iran,” Meridor told Ravid.

In July that year, two senior Obama administration officials flew to Abu Dhabi to meet bin Zayed, who said he shared Israel’s outlook about Iran.

“I agree with Israeli intelligence about the progress of the Iranian nuclear program. The Israelis are going to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities sooner than you think. Probably this year. The Iranians will react with rocket fire first of all against us,” bin Zayed said, according to a telegram at the time.

The same year, Meir Dagan, the late army general and head of the Mossad under several prime ministers, proposed to newly appointed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that an Israeli company sell drones to the UAE in exchange for collaboration on Iran.

“The Mossad serves as the foreign ministry of Israel in relation to all those countries with which there are no diplomatic relations,” Dov Weisglass, a former senior advisor to the late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, toldRavid.

It is unclear whether Netanyahu gave the green light before or after the deal was finalized with the Israeli company. Either way, the UAE paid tens of millions of dollars to the company before the Israeli defense ministry learned of the deal, which it vehemently opposed, and canceled.

No more assassinations

Bin Zayed “felt personally betrayed, and the first stage was to overcome the personal side and the insult,” President Barack Obama’s ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, told Ravid.

In January 2010, Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was killed in a hotel room in Dubai, and his slaying was blamed on Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad.

The cancellation of the arms sale, along with the Israeli assassination carried out on Emirati soil, created a rift between the two countries that lasted from 2010 until 2012, according to Ravid.

The conflict was only resolved when Israel agreed never to conduct assassinations in the UAE, and the Gulf state was compensated by the weapons company and the Israeli government for its down payment.

“The United Arab Emirates wanted an Israeli admission, at least in a secret channel, of responsibility for this assassination, and in the end they made do with something less,” Shapiro told Ravid.

Israel gave an undertaking “that such things would not happen again on United Arab Emirates soil,” adding that it “would be willing to explore ways to increase security dialogue with the UAE and exchange of intelligence in ways that would benefit the UAE,” Shapiro said.

Consistent dialogue

Shapiro said dialogue between the two countries resumed, as did collaboration on intelligence and technology, but he provided no specifics.

Meanwhile in Washington, the relationship between Al Otaiba and Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer was growing so strong over their mutual hostility towards Iran that the latter invited Al Otaiba to attend Netanyahu’s March 2015 speech to Congress attacking the Obama administration’s efforts to reach a nuclear deal with Iran, but the Emirati ambassador “politely declined,” according to Ravid.

In 2015, the UAE allowed Israel to open an office at the International Renewable Energy Agency in Abu Dhabi.

In addition to the phone calls between Netanyahu and Emirati Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed in 2015 and 2016, Shapiro also confirms that “representatives of the prime minister of Israel and representatives of the crown prince of the Emirates spoke regularly, sometimes face to face and sometimes on the phone.”

Israel and the UAE have no formal diplomatic relations. But the failed 2009 drone deal was one of numerous secret contacts between Emirati and Israeli officials that traces back to the 1990s, with a mutual enmity towards Iran at the core of this relationship.

Ravid describes “an alliance that for the last 20 years has included extensive security, political and economic ties between the two countries, most of them secret. The threat from Tehran strengthened the alliance built on an ancient principle of war: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

In October, Israel’s sports and culture minister Miri Regev visited the Emirates along with her country’s judo team, part of a blitz of Israeli normalization with Arab states in the region.

Regev cried with emotion as the Israeli national anthem was played in Abu Dhabi.

The Israeli politician also paid a visit to the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi – the largest in the United Arab Emirates – boasting that it was the first time an Israeli government minister had visited the shrine.

Saudi Prince to visit Israel?

That same month, Netanyahu visited Oman in the most visible sign of Israel’s normalization of ties with Arab states with which it has no formal diplomatic relations.

That relationship continues to develop.

Oman’s foreign minister Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah secretly met with Netanyahu this week, Israeli publication Walla reported on Wednesday.

Walla published a video showing Oman’s foreign minister arriving through the parking lot entrance of a Warsaw hotel for a secret meeting with Netanyahu, who was in the Polish capital for a conference hosted by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

“During the Warsaw conference, Netanyahu is expected to meet with Arab foreign ministers and senior officials from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco and take pictures with them,” Walla claimed.

“The courageous decision of [Oman’s ruler] Sultan Qaboos to invite me to Oman is changing the world, it’s pointing the way for many others to do the same,” Netanyahu told Oman’s foreign minister in a video of their meeting.

ראש הממשלה בנימין נתניהו נפגש בוורשה עם שר החוץ של עומאן, יוסף בן עלאוי.

רה"מ נתניהו לשר החוץ של עומאן: "רבים הולכים בעקבותיכם, גם כאלה שנמצאים כאן היום בוועידה".

שר החוץ העומאני בן עלאוי: "האנשים במזה"ת סבלו רבות כי הם נותרו בעבר. זהו עידן חדש למען העתיד ולמען שגשוג לכל העמים" pic.twitter.com/2hkaQSPRAL
— ראש ממשלת ישראל (@IsraeliPM_heb) 13 February 2019

“People have suffered a lot because they are stuck in the past. Now we say, this is a new era for the future,” the Omani minister responded.

In an unprecedented interview with Israeli television shortly after the Warsaw meeting, Saudi Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, a senior royal and former intelligence chief, spoke to Barak Ravid.

Turki told Ravid that Netanyahu is “deceiving” the Israeli public by making it believe that Arab states would move into formal diplomatic relations before resolution of the Palestinian question.

הנסיך הסעודי אל-פייסל לחדשות 13: "נתניהו מרמה את הישראלים כשהוא אומר שניתן להשיג יחסים עם העולם הערבי, בלי קשר לפלסטינים" • @BarakRavid עם הפרק הרביעי והאחרון מתוך סדרת הכתבות "סודות המפרץ" >> https://t.co/8UXrI9KM0I pic.twitter.com/GvvbAk8srm
— החדשות 13 (@newsisrael13) 13 February 2019

After the interview, Turki joked with Ravid about marrying an Arab woman to improve his Arabic. When Ravid asked him to visit him in Israel, the prince responded that he would if Ravid would host him.

צפו בתמונות הקשות: אני מגמגם והנסיך הסעודי טורקי אל-פייסל ממליץ לי על דרך לשפר את הערבית pic.twitter.com/ataOEzfjSY
— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) 13 February 2019

Bahrain or Morocco?

Israeli and Moroccan media have reported in recent weeks that Netanyahu’s next trip to an Arab state with no formal relations would be to Morocco.

A Moroccan media report, citing Israeli media, claimed the trip will take place on 30 March, after Pope Francis visits the North African country.

A Moroccan government spokesperson did not deny the story, but said the government refuses to comment on what it calls rumors.

In December, Mort Fridman, president of Israel lobby giant AIPAC reportedly suggested that Netanyahu’s next stop in the Gulf will be Bahrain.

Bahrain has been even more open than some of its neighbors in its embrace of Israel.

The island state’s foreign minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa regularly tweets in defense of Israel and Netanyahu and against Iran.

In another report earlier this month, Ravid revealed that Al Khalifa approached Israel’s former foreign minister Tzipi Livni at the February 2017 Munich Security Conference to relay a message on behalf of Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.

Bahrain’s foreign minister informed Livni that the king has decided to move towards normalization with Israel, and wanted her to inform Netanyahu.

Livni reportedly rushed back to Israel to brief the prime minister.

“The relationship between Israel and Bahrain has been going on for more than 25 years,” Ravid wrote.

On Thursday, Ravid asked Bahrain’s foreign minister if and when Netanyahu would be invited to visit the island state.

Bahrain foreign minister on meeting Netanyahu: It will happen when it happens pic.twitter.com/DxePh75QTJ
— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) 14 February 2019

“It will happen when it happens,” the minister answered.

In 2009, Bahrain’s king met secretly with then Israeli President Shimon Peres in New York, a meeting organized by an unnamed Israeli diplomat who warmed up to several Bahrain foreign ministers, according to Ravid.

When Peres passed away in 2016, Bahrain’s foreign minister paid tribute to him on Twitter, and the government sent a representative to the funeral in Israel.

خالد بن ‏أحمد

✔@khalidalkhalifa

Rest in Peace President Shimon Peres , a Man of War and a Man of the still elusive Peace in the Middle East

389

10:06 PM - Sep 28, 2016

Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa was as keen as his father to normalize with Israel.

The crown prince wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post in 2009 calling for normalization between Arab states and Israel that was praised by Netanyahu.

Then, Haaretz columnist Akiva Eldar sought an interview with the crown prince “so that he would express these views directly to the Israeli public via Israeli media,” Shapiro told Ravid.

Eldar received a positive response, “and was invited to interview the Bahraini foreign minister during his visit to New York in September for the UN General Assembly.”

Soon after, Obama’s Middle East envoy George Mitchell flew to Manama to speak to the crown prince directly, who told him that “We, the Arabs, should calm the Israelis’ concerns and talk to them directly, and it will also make Netanyahu’s job easier.”

“There are six horses in the race – Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Oman – if I had to bet which horse would cross the finish line of diplomatic relations first, I would bet on the Bahraini horse,” Marc Schneier, an American rabbi active in promoting Israeli-Arab normalization, told Ravid.

Yet others may be trying to catch up, including Kuwait which has been the most resistant to normalization until now.

A Kuwaiti business delegation visited Israel earlier this month, with approval from Netanyahu’s office.

Kuwaiti journalist Fajer Alsaeed appeared on Israel’s public broadcaster Kan in January to call for full Arab normalization with Israel, after doing so on her Twitter account.

And, Israel’s foreign ministry announced earlier this year that three Iraqi delegations visited Israel in 2018. The Iraqi parliament’s deputy speaker Hassan Karim al-Kaabi demanded a probe into the visits.

Ali Abunimah assisted with translation.