{"id":148277,"date":"2021-10-13T17:47:28","date_gmt":"2021-10-13T09:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=148277"},"modified":"2021-10-13T17:47:28","modified_gmt":"2021-10-13T09:47:28","slug":"israel-uae-ministers-in-us-as-pres-biden-seeks-to-expand-normalisation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=148277","title":{"rendered":"Israel, UAE ministers in US as Pres Biden seeks to expand normalisation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"U.S.
US Vice President Kamala Harris meets Israeli’s foreign affair minister Yair Lapid at the White House<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

WASHINGTON, Oct 13 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The top diplomats from Israel and the United Arab Emirates are set to hold three-way talks in Washington Wednesday as President Joe Biden’s administration embraces and looks to expand a normalisation drive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Concerns about Iran — the specter of which helped bring together Israel and Gulf states when they established relations last year as part of the Abraham Accords — are expected to be high on the agenda after Biden’s early diplomatic overtures to Tehran bore little immediate fruit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet separately and together with Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and his Emirati counterpart Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, following a similar virtual event last month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former president Donald Trump considered the so-called Abraham Accords to be a crowning achievement for his administration as the United Arab Emirates, followed shortly afterward by Bahrain and Morocco, became the first Arab states to normalise relations with Israel in decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite their myriad policy differences, the Biden team has given credit to the Trump administration over the Abraham Accords, dismissing criticism that normalisation ignores the plight of the Palestinians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump’s approach was also seen as transactional as he agreed to sell state-of-the-art fighter-jets to the UAE and recognise Morocco’s controversial claim over Western Sahara — moves that Biden has not changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A senior State Department official said that the Abraham Accords can “help to achieve a more peaceful and prosperous Middle East.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It’s not a substitute to a two-state solution. We hope that normalization can be leveraged to advance progress on the Israeli-Palestinian track,” the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said the three nations will announce working groups to expand cooperation on energy and water — a scarce resource in the Middle East — as well as religious coexistence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both Israel and the United Arab Emirates have boasted of dividends since signing their accord in the presence of Trump at the White House in September 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Israel has made progress in its long-term goal of ending its isolation in its near neighborhood, while the United Arab Emirates has voiced hope at $1 trillion in new economic activity over the next decade through trade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The US official said the Biden administration was “actively working to expand” normalisation but declined to give specifics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sudan, under heavy arm-twisting from Trump, said last year it would seek relations with Israel but has balked amid heavy pressure on the country’s fragile new civilian-backed government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump is not the only leader to exit since the Abraham Accords were signed. Israel’s veteran former right-wing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, lost power despite the signature international win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lapid, a centrist who crafted a coalition to unseat the divisive Netanyahu, and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett have kept many of the former government’s international priorities — including a pressure drive on Iran, whose nuclear programme has been hindered by a slew of sabotage attacks widely blamed on Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Calling for peaceful solutions, Biden has sought to rejoin a 2015 nuclear accord with Iran that was bitterly opposed by Israel and trashed by Trump, leading Tehran to revive contested nuclear work that it had wound down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indirect US-Iran talks made no breakthrough before the election of a new hardline government in Tehran, which has yet to return to the negotiations in Vienna.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a meeting Tuesday with Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, Lapid called for “the need for an alternative plan to the nuclear agreement,” according to the Israeli embassy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the new government has been mindful to keep disagreements more civil after Israel faced a heavy backlash from Biden’s Democratic Party when Netanyahu openly campaigned against former president Barack Obama’s diplomacy. — NNN-AGENCIES<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON, Oct 13 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The top diplomats from Israel and the United Arab Emirates are set to hold three-way talks in Washington Wednesday as President Joe Biden’s administration embraces and looks to expand a normalisation drive. Concerns about Iran — the specter of which helped bring together Israel and Gulf states when they established […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[208,215,217],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148277"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=148277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=148277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=148277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=148277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}