US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet next week with top diplomats from Israel and the United Arab Emirates to discuss “progress made” in the year since they agreed to normalization, the State Department said Saturday.
“Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken will meet with Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and the UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan on October 13 in separate bilateral meetings and then in a trilateral setting,” the State Department said in a statement.
“They will discuss progress made since the signing of the Abraham Accords last year, future opportunities for collaboration, and bilateral issues including regional security and stability.”
I look forward to welcoming @YairLapid and @ABZayed, my counterparts from Israel and the UAE, to Washington next week for meetings to discuss accomplishments since the signing of the Abraham Accords and other important issues.
— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) October 9, 2021
Blinken had met virtually in mid-September with Lapid and top Emirati foreign policy adviser Anwar Gargash, as well as top diplomats from Bahrain and Morocco.
The meeting amounted to a full embrace by President Joe Biden of the so-called Abraham Accords, which his predecessor Donald Trump considered a key foreign policy legacy but was met with outrage and protests across the Arab world.
Opinion polls showed that the overwhelming majority of respondents in the Arab world were opposed to the the normalization deals, The New Arab noted.
United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to hold meetings this week with foreign ministers from the UAE and Israel. https://t.co/80ryo9Rnpm
— UAE-Israel Business Council (@UAEIsraelBiz) October 10, 2021
In August 2020, Israel and the UAE have reached a deal that is expected to lead to “full normalization of relations” between the Arab nation and Israel in an agreement that US President Donald Trump reportedly helped broker.
The agreement is considered a severe blow to Palestinian efforts aimed at isolating Israel regionally and internationally until it ends its military occupation and apartheid-like system in occupied Palestine.
(The Palestine Chronicle, The New Arab, Social Media)
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