AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who is in Bahrain to formalize the kingdom’s relations with the Israeli regime, has spoken about how it would contribute not just to investment but also technology.
“I think the opportunity is way beyond just investments,” Mnuchin told reporters on the flight from Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, also carrying an Israeli delegation to Bahrain. “It’s in technology, building various different businesses - and in the case of Bahrain as well, really expanding the opportunities for them quite, quite, quite dramatically.”
Nearly 20 commercial flights a week between Ben Gurion airport, Dubai and Abu Dhabi will be one outcome of the deal between Manama and Tel Aviv, brokered by the Trump administration.
Israeli and Bahraini officials started formal relations by signing several memorandums of understanding.
The United Arab Emirates in September formalized relations with Israel after attempts by US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to negotiate the so-called agreement, which has been categotically denounced by Palestinians.
Saudi Arabia has also acknowledged the “eventual normalization” of ties, disregarding the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people as well as the regime’s construction of illegal settlements on occupied lands.
“The focus now needs to be on getting the Palestinians and the Israelis back to the negotiating table. In the end, the only thing that can deliver lasting peace and lasting stability is an agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis,” said Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal Bin Farhan Al Saud. “If we don’t manage to achieve that, we will continue to have that festering wound in the region. We are committed to the process of peace… Peace, we see, is a strategic necessity for the region. Part of that is an eventual normalization with Israel, as envisioned in the Arab peace plan.”
The US president, who initially tried to negotiate a deal between Israelis and Palestinians albeit to no avail, is now pressuring other Muslim nations to ignore the suffering of their brothers and sisters in Palestine and join the Saudi-backed initiative to normalize ties with Israel.
Sudan in one such country, where the first conference of the so-called Popular Initiative for Normalization with Israel was held Sunday, according to Al-Hadath, a major Arabic-language TV channel based in the UAE.
“Normalization simply means to make our relations with our countries, including Israel, normal… since the 1960s, Sudan has been imprisoned by certain ideological concepts,” said Najm al-Din Adam Abdullah, a member of the organization.
Morocco and Tunisia are also on top of Trump’s list. The president, who is running against Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the 2020 election, has been selling the deal as a great achievement in his campaign, while ignoring the dark reality of Palestinians’ plight under the Zionist regime’s occupation, which lies at the core of the conflicts in West Asia.
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source : PressTV
Monday
19 October 2020
4:37:33 AM
1079156
Israel normalization to expand Bahrain opportunities ‘quite dramatically,’: Mnuchin
US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who is in Bahrain to formalize the kingdom’s relations with the Israeli regime, has spoken about how it would contribute not just to investment but also technology.