Israel must be part of a new Middle East order bound together by both regional opportunities and the need to combat joint threats, Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita said on Friday at a virtual event marking the anniversary of the Abraham Accords.
“There is a need for a new regional order where Israel is a stakeholder and no longer an outsider in its own region,” Bourita said at the event hosted by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
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“This new regional order should not be perceived as against someone but rather to benefit us all,” he said.
“Also, this new regional order should be based [not only] on an updated joint assessment of threats but also how to generate opportunities that favor stability and development for all.”
The event with US, Israeli, Moroccan, Bahraini and Emirati officials was held two days after the actual September 15, 2020, anniversary date of the White House ceremony that launched the Abraham Accords and allowed Arab states to normalize ties with Israel.
Prior to the accords, Israel had diplomatic ties only with Egypt, with which it signed a peace treaty in 1979, and Jordan, with which an agreement was reached in 1994.
Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Abdullatif Al Zayani, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Donald Trump and United Arab Emirates (UAE) Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed participate in the signing of the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and some of its Middle Eas (credit: REUTERS/TOM BRENNER)
As a sign of the progress tithe had been made in a year, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid told the ministers at Friday’s virtual event that he plans to travel to Bahrain later this month, in what would be the first such ministerial visit.
Lapid called on more Arab countries to join the accords, which he said was “open for new members.” He added that” our common goal is to make sure that other countries will follow suit and join us,” Lapid said.
“We’re going to make this a bigger and bigger event and a bigger and bigger initiative for peace in the region,” he added.
The accords have led to dozens of agreements and “we have more than $650 million in direct trade,” Lapid said. “We’re going to dedicate the next couple of years to strategic progress of infrastructure, mostly water, energy, security, food, connectivity, and all of this is going to happen on a regional level,” Lapid said.
Blinken said the Biden administration supported the Abraham Accords would encourage others to join it.
“This administration will continue to build on the successful efforts of the last administration to keep normalization marching forward,” Blinken said.
This will include helping to strengthen Israel’s burgeoning ties with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, Lapid said. He also spoke of supporting Kosovo’s new ties with Israel, even though the country is not part of the accords.
The US will also work to “deepen Israel’s longstanding relationships with Egypt and Jordan,” Blinken said.
“We will encourage more countries to follow the lead of the Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco. We want to widen the circle of peaceful diplomacy because it’s in the interests of countries across the region and around the world for Israel to be treated like any other country,” Blinken said.
The Secretary of State and the three Arab officials call spoke of the importance of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Lapid mentioned the Palestinians only by way of encouraging support for his economic plan for Gaza.
Blinken called to build on “this normalization to make tangible improvements in the lives of Palestinians, and to make progress toward the longstanding goal of advancing a negotiated peace between Israelis and Palestinians.”
Bourita said that his country wanted to help facilitate a peace process.
“Morocco has always played a significant, still discreet role in facilitating peace in the past, and is ready to pursue this role today,” Bourita said.
His country, Bouria explained, believes that there is no other alternative to a two-state solution with an independent Palestinian state within borders of June ’67.”
“The status of Jerusalem has to be preserved as a common heritage of humanity, as a symbol of peaceful coexistence of the followers of the three monotheistic religions,” Bourita added.
With respect to the accords Bourita said it was important to actively promote and publicize the benefits of the accords as a way of underscoring to the region the positive benefits that can be brought about by ties with Israel.
‘We must actively and constantly demonstrate benefits on regional peace and security, on people-to-people relations, on business opportunities. These are the best arguments for other countries to follow suit,” Bourita said.
Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Al Zayani said, “We need to demonstrate what genuine regional peace, interdependence, and prosperity can mean in practice for the day-to-day lives of all the peoples of the Middle East.”
Emirati presidential advisor Anwar Gargash said he believed that he accords had broken a psychological barrier that could now make it easier for others to join.
Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said, “These unprecedented agreements are a new chapter in the history of peace in the Middle East.”
He thanked Emirati and Bahraini leaders for the “courage and the daring that enabled the establishment of diplomatic relations, and the American administration which tirelessly led, supported and mediated the success of this achievement.”
Bennett added, “Relations between the countries are only at their beginning and are already bearing many fruits. The government of Israel under my leadership will continue to implement the agreements while striving for a stable, secure and prosperous Middle East for the future of our children.”
Blinken’s event took place 43 years after former prime minister Menachem Begin and former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat signed the Camp David Accords in 1978, under the auspices of then-US president Jimmy Carter. It was the preliminary document of what would become the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace deal.
President Isaac Herzog on Friday phoned Carter to thank him for brokering what was the world’s first Arab-Israeli peace deal.
He said that this groundbreaking step saved lives in the Middle East and paved the way for the deal with Jordan and the Abraham Accords.
“You did something really holy: This was the first peace agreement between Israel and an Arab state, which led all the way to the agreements we had last year with the Gulf states,” Herzog said.
He also congratulated Carter ahead of his upcoming 97th birthday on October 1.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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