Arab parties, groups decry Bahrain-Israel pact

ISTANBUL

A deal between Bahrain and Israel to normalize their relations has invited a storm of condemnations from political parties and groups across the Arab world.

On Friday, Manama and Tel Aviv announced a US-brokered agreement to establish diplomatic relations.

“This shameful agreement…is another stab in the heart of the Palestinian cause and a well-established treason,” the National Liberation Front, the largest party in the Algerian parliament, said in a statement on Saturday.

It accused the Arab League of “complexity” in drafting this agreement.

“This league has failed to condemn the UAE-Israel normalization deal despite the fact that this agreement was a brazen violation of the so-called Arab Peace Initiative,” it said.

In Jordan, the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood group, termed the deal as a “historic crime that must be retracted”.

In a statement, the front termed the normalization of relations with Israel as “a betrayal of the Palestinian cause, the struggle of the Palestinian people and positions of the Arab peoples”.

Yemen’s General People’s Congress also denounced the Bahrain-Israel pact, saying it was an attempt to appease Israel.

This agreement “comes as part of the so-called deal of the century and part of plots to destroy Arab countries that still stand in the face of the normalization plans,” the party said in a statement.

In Bahrain, the Islamic Action Society (Amal) called on the Arab and Islamic world to condemn the Bahraini “crime” of normalizing relations with Israel.

In a statement, it called for exercising all forms of pressure “to halt this crime through all legitimate and possible means”.

The Bahrain-Israel agreement came one month after a similar deal was announced between Tel Aviv and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Bahrain becomes the fourth Arab country to have diplomatic relations with Israel, after Egypt in 1979, Jordan 1994 and the UAE in August 2020.

*Ahmed Asmar contributed to this report from Ankara