Palestinian groups, Bahrain’s al-Wefaq condemn ‘israel’s’ meeting with so-called Arab foreign ministers in Negev

Top diplomats from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Morocco, Egypt, Bahrain, the United States, and Israel are scheduled to meet in the Negev desert on Sunday and Monday to press ahead with a US-brokered normalization of relations between the Arab states and the Israeli regime.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel on Saturday for the talks, which come in light of renewed Israeli violence in Negev, where the regime in Tel Aviv plans to construct ten new Jewish towns.

In a statement on Sunday, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas denounced the meeting held on the occupied land of Palestine at a time when the Israeli regime continues its “worst forms of settlement construction and Judaization of our Islamic and Christian holy sites, and our people are experiencing various forms of persecution, terrorism, killing and displacement.”

Hamas reiterated its “absolute rejection” of all forms of normalization with the occupying regime, stressing that such meetings “only serve the enemy in perpetuating its continuous aggression against our land, our people, and our holy sites.”

The resistance movement also called on the Arab countries that signed the so-called Abraham Accords with Israel to reconsider their move in order to honor their historical responsibilities to protect al-Quds and Palestine from the Israeli regime.

The so-called Abraham Accords refer to the normalization agreements reached between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain in 2020 through medication of former US President Donald Trump’s administration. Morocco and Sudan later reached similar US-brokered deals with the Israeli regime.

The deals have been roundly condemned by Palestinians as a brazen betrayal of their cause.

In condemning the meeting, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad said the event reflects the loss of Arab identity of all those who agreed to be part of the enemy’s normalization project.

“It is the right of all Arab people to ask: Are the Arab foreign ministers so ignorant of the reality and nature of the conflict in the Negev that they participate in a meeting hosted by [Israel] on the land of the Negev, which is threatened by Judaization and uprooting of its people?” Daoud Shehab, Islamic Jihad movement’s secretary general, told Palestine Today on Sunday.

Shehab noted that normalization and cooperation with the Israeli regime only serve the occupying entity and its aggressive policies targeting the Palestinian people and their land.

The deputy secretary general of Bahrain’s al-Wefaq National Islamic Society also condemned the meeting, warning that the Bahraini regime was making a miscalculation.

“Achieving political stability in Bahrain and the region will be through the people’s attainment of democracy, freedom, justice and political pluralism, and not through normalization [with Israel] to escape the suffocating political blockage in Bahrain,” Hussain Aldaihi said via his Twitter account.