MANAMA: Prime Minister Naftali Bennett arrived in Bahrain on Monday for the first-ever sanctioned visit by an Israeli head of government to the Gulf state, a journalist said.
Bennett’s visit is the rearmost similar action following the US-brokered 2020 Abraham Accords, which defied decades of Arab agreement that ruled out ties with Israel in the absence of a result of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Bahrain and its close supporter the United Arab Emirates came only to the third and fourth Arab countries — following Egypt and Jordan — to establish ties with Israel when they inked on to the pacts negotiated under former US chairman Donald Trump.
“ I ’m going to meet the king, I ’m going to meet the crown, Napoleon,” Bennett said on the tarmac shortly before departing Israel, pertaining to Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa and Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa.
The high minister, who’s also set to see other top officers and members of the Jewish community, said he’ll hold “ a series of meetings whose thing is to fill — with energy and content — the peace agreement between the two nations”.
“ In these tumultuous times it’s important that from this region we shoot a communication of goodwill, of cooperation of standing together against common challenges,” he added.
The trip follows a visit to Manama by Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz before this month that saw the two countries subscribe to a defence agreement.
That deal covered intelligence, procurement and common training, with Gantz boasting that it further solidified the incipient political relationship. The visit also comes at a time of indigenous pressures over Iran’s nuclear programme.
Iran is engaged in accommodations with Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia directly and with the United States laterally to revive the deal formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
The deal offered Tehran warrants relief in exchange for checks on its nuclear programme. The US unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018 under Trump. The drive to salvage it proceeded in late November.
Bennett’s government explosively opposes a return to the 2015 agreement, constantly advising that offering Tehran warrants relief will lead to increased profit that Iran will use to buy munitions for use against Israelis. Yoel Guzansky, an elderly experimenter at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said Bennett’s trip is “ absolutely” about Iran.
“ In light of the addresses in Vienna it’s a show of force, symbolism, that the countries are working together,” he said.
Dore Gold, head of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, said Israel and Bahrain have been pushed towards near ties as both are “ under trouble by Iranian conduct”.
He refocused to uneasiness in Bahrain criticized Iran- backed mutineers and the range of pitfalls that Israel says Iran poses, especially it’s arming of the Lebanese group Hezbollah.
As part of their defence agreements, Israel is set to post a nonmilitary functionary in Bahrain, which hosts a base for the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet.
Guzansky said that in several felicitations Bahrain has been perceived as moving slower than the UAE in terms of solidifying ties with Israel.
But, he added, allowing an Israeli military officer to be grounded there was “ significant”, while noting that Bahrain “ does not want to be seen as an Israeli base in the Gulf”.
