The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain signed the Abraham accords peace agreement to normalise relations with Israel last week in Washington. With this agreement, the two countries joined Egypt and Jordan, which signed peace treaties with Israel in 1979 and 1994 respectively. Mauritania also established diplomatic ties with Israel in 1999 but froze relations in 2009 in response to the 2008-9 Gaza war.
In his speech on this occasion, the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed, “this is not only a peace between leaders, it’s a peace between peoples – Israelis, Emiratis and Bahrainis are already embracing one another.”
Unfortunately, this is not the case.
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