An official statement from the White House reads that the King of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa bin Salman al-Khalifa, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke on the phone today and “agreed to establish full diplomatic relations” between the two countries. Trump also announced that Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Abdullatif Al Zayani will attend the ceremony at the White House scheduled for Tuesday, September 15, along with Emirati Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.
A double peace agreement will therefore be signed in Washington and this is exactly the result that Trump was aiming for and for which he worked assiduously, sending both Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner to Manama in a few days. The US Administration has transformed the many words spoken this month into facts, with more or less cryptic statements that foreshadowed a domino effect after Abu Dhabi’s choice to open to Israel. Kushner had repeated several times that “another country in the area will soon follow the courageous choice of the Emirate Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed”.
Bahrain, on the other hand, had not kept its papers too hidden in recent months: it was among the first Arab countries to congratulate the Emirates on the agreement with Israel, calling it “a historic step towards achieving stability and peace in the region”. But above all, it was Manama itself that hosted in June 2019 the conference for the presentation of the economic part of Trump’s “Peace for Prosperity” Plan, which was then revealed in its entirety at the White House in January, in the presence of the Ambassadors in Washington of Bahrain. , United Arab Emirates and Oman – which not surprisingly is given as the next country that could join the historic thaw for the creation of the “New Middle East”, as Netanyahu defined it when commenting on the announcement this evening.
There has not yet been an official reaction from the Palestinian side. Al Jazeera quotes an anonymous source within the PLO who talks about another “stab in the back”, the same terminology used to condemn the deal with Abu Dhabi. Only Wednesday did the Palestinians suffer a significant defeat when the Arab League refused to support a resolution condemning the Emirates. The Palestinian ambassador to the Arab League commented: “This refusal opens the door to other declarations by Arab countries in this direction. It is now clear that not only the Emirates have betrayed the Palestinian cause”.
Even Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi this evening congratulated the Israel-Bahrain agreement, “an important step towards achieving stability and a just peace in the Middle East. Also for the Palestinians”.
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