Bahrain FM Woos Zionist Entity: “‘Israel’ There to Stay”

Friday 28 June 2019

Bahrain FM Woos Zionist Entity: “‘Israel’ There to Stay”

Bahrain’s foreign minister has given an interview to an Israeli television channel, in which he called for open communication with the Zionist entity, the latest form of normalization between the Gulf state and the Israeli regime.

Bahrain sees the US-led economic workshop taking place in Manama as a possible “gamechanger” tantamount in its scope to the 1978 Camp David agreement between Tel Aviv and Cairo, Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa said Wednesday.

“We see it as very, very important,” Khalifa told The Times of Israel on the sidelines of the so-called “Peace to Prosperity” workshop, which is considered as the economic phase of US President Donald Trump’s so-called “deal of the century”.

The Bahraini minister also stressed that his country recognizes the Zionist entity’s “right to exist”, saying that it is “there to stay,” and wants peace with it.

“Israel is a country in the region… and it’s there to stay, of course,” he said.

“Who did we offer peace to [with] the [Arab] Peace Initiative? We offered it to a state named the State of Israel, in the region. We did not offer it to some faraway island or some faraway country,” Khalifa continued, referring to a Saudi-backed peace framework.

“We offered it to Israel. So we do believe that Israel is a country to stay, and we want better relations with it, and we want peace with it.”

“Come and talk to us. Talk to us about it. Say, guys, you have a good initiative, but we have one thing that worries us,” he said.

He said the US-organized conference in Manama could be like Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s visit to Al-Quds (Jerusalem) in 1977, which helped pave the way to the Camp David Accords and the normalizing of relations between Egypt and the Zionist entity.

“As much as Camp David 1 was a major gamechanger, after the visit of President Sadat — if this succeeds, and we build on it, and it attracts attention and momentum, this would be the second gamechanger,” Khalifa said.

Source: Israeli media