U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he expected Saudi Arabia to join the agreement announced last week by Israel and the United Arab Emirates to normalize diplomatic ties and forge a broad new relationship.
US President Donald Trump said he expects Saudi Arabia and Iran to join the peace agreement between the UAE and Israel. https://t.co/2acWrSN982
— The New Arab (@The_NewArab) August 20, 2020
Under the accord, which Trump helped broker, Israel agreed to suspend its planned annexation of areas of the occupied West Bank. The agreement also firms up opposition to regional power Iran, which the UAE, Israel and the United States view as the main threat in the Middle East.
Read more: Whither the Arab and the Muslim world?
In Saudi Arabia’s first official comment since the agreement was announced, its foreign minister said on Wednesday the Sunni kingdom remained committed to peace with Israel on the basis of a 2002 Arab Peace Initiative.
Saudi Arabia, which does not recognize Israel, drew up the initiative by which Arab nations offered to normalize ties with Israel in return for a statehood deal with the Palestinians and full Israeli withdrawal from territory captured in 1967.
Read more: UAE-Israel deal: A betrayal of the Palestinian people?
Earlier in the news conference, Trump called the UAE-Israel accord a good deal and said “countries that you wouldn’t even believe want to come into that deal.” He did not name any other countries besides Saudi Arabia.
UAE-Israel deal is a “Zionist occupation”, must be rejected: Kuwait lawmakers
Thirty-seven Kuwaiti lawmakers on Tuesday called on their government to reject a normalization deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
In a statement, the members of parliament affirmed their solidarity with the Palestinian people, “recalling the parliament’s stable and continuous position against normalization [with Israel] in all its forms”.
“The crimes of the Zionist occupation cannot be removed by normalization from the souls of our children,” the statement said.
Read more: Whither the Arab and the Muslim world?
The statement referred to the incursions of Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque and Israeli attempts to Judaize the holy city.
The Kuwaiti government has maintained silence regarding the UAE-Israel normalization deal.
More than 30 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Kuwait issued a joint statement Sunday condemning an agreement between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel to normalize relations.
Kuwait. According to Al-Qabas, a Kuwaiti newspaper, government sources affirm that “Kuwait maintains its position and will be the last country to normalize with Israel.” Beyond Kuwaiti officials, analysts and academics, few have addressed Kuwait’s position on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
Adam Hoffman and Moran Zaga acknowledged in February that Kuwait is “the only Gulf state that opposes even discrete normalisation with Israel.”
In January 2019, Giorgio Cafiero wrote that “Kuwait has become the one GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] state that refuses to see warmer ties with Israel as prudent.” Even White House senior adviser Jared Kushner said to Reuters that Kuwait is “out there taking a very radical view on the conflict to date in favour of the Palestinians.”
Online Int’l News with additional input by GVS News Desk