Tel Aviv –
Agreement reached Arab Saudi and Iran to restore diplomatic relations broken for the last seven years provoked a strong reaction from Israel. The Israeli opposition calls the Riyadh-Tehran deal a foreign policy failure by the Prime Minister (PM) Benjamin Netanyahu.
As reported AFPSaturday (11/3/2023), the Israeli opposition leader accused Netanyahu of neglecting Israel’s foreign relations in favor of focusing more on domestic affairs, especially justice reform which drew protests of tens of thousands of citizens who took to the streets who saw him as a threat to democracy.
“It is a complete and dangerous foreign policy failure by the Israeli government,” the Israeli opposition leader said Yair Lapid in a statement via Twitter. This statement by Lapid, who is a former prime minister and former foreign minister, echoes the same sentiments from other opposition figures.
Three years ago, foreign policy was a triumph for Netanyahu. At the time, he hailed a “new era” in relations forging between Israel and Arab countries, many of which view Israel as a pariah, when his country and the United Arab Emirates agreed to normalize relations.
Under the Abraham Agreement mediated by the United States (US), Israel also reached agreements to normalize relations with Bahrain and Morocco.
Since the beginning of the process, Netanyahu has never hidden from his main goal, which is to bring the world’s largest Muslim power, Saudi Arabia, into the deal as part of the outcome of a regional alliance against Iran, Israel’s staunch enemy. But that hasn’t happened until now.
However, it was Riyadh and Tehran that first announced an agreement to restore relations and reopen their respective diplomatic missions in a surprise announcement on Friday (10/3) local time. The announcement was made after the two countries held a meeting in China.
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(nvc/idh)
