JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid will host his counterparts from the US, UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Egypt today, in a historic summit at the Negev kibbutz of Sde Boker. This is the first time that a summit has taken place in the remote region where David Ben-Gurion chose to live his last years.
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Jerusalem Saturday night. Blinken will meet with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Lapid before heading south for the Negev Summit with Arab leaders in Sde Boker. Blinken will meet with other Israeli leaders and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas during the trip.
The summit at the Isrotel Kedma hotel will begin Sunday afternoon. The diplomats will dine together at the hotel this evening and hold work meetings Monday.
The summit is expected to focus mainly on the Iran nuclear talks as well as on the implications of the Russia-Ukraine war for the Middle East. This is the first summit in Israel which includes the UAE,Bahrain and Morocco who signed normalization agreements with Israel in the 2020 Abraham Accords. The summit demonstrates the Biden administration’s willingness to promote the accords and maintain diplomatic pressure on Iran despite the current talks regarding the nuclear agreement.
Israel and the Gulf Arab states have voiced strong misgivings over the potential deal, which was close to signing until until Russia made last-minute demands of the United States, insisting that sanctions imposed on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine should not affect its trade with Iran.
“What you’ve got is a two-fold agenda,” Dennis Ross of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said. “One is Ukraine, to talk about how we see things but also to hear from the Israelis, what they are picking up … The other part of it is going to be Iran, because there is every expectation on the Israeli side that we are going to see a deal.”
My father a”h spent the war years as a refugee in a DP camp run by the Free French just outside Casablanca, in Morocco. He lived there for 5 years, ages 12 to 17. He would often talk about the warmth of the Moroccan Jews and how beautiful Morocco was. I’d like to see Israel and Morocco establish diplomatic ties – my father would be happy.