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Israel formally opened its embassy in Bahrain on Monday, three years after either side normalised ties and as Washington presses Riyadh for the same deal that might be Israel’s greatest diplomatic win within the area.
Israeli International Minister Eli Cohen attended an official ceremony for the opening of the diplomatic mission throughout a go to to Bahrain which included a delegation of businessmen and authorities officers.
“The (Bahrain) overseas minister and I agreed that we should always work collectively to extend the variety of direct flights, the tourism, the commerce quantity, the investments,” Cohen stated in the course of the ceremony.
Bahrain’s International Minister Abdullatif Al Zayani stated the inauguration of the embassy “signifies our shared dedication to safety and prosperity for all of the peoples of our area”.
The normalisation deal between Bahrain and Israel was a part of a sequence of agreements, often known as the Abraham Accords, which had been additionally signed with the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Sudan.
Bahrain, house to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, is a small island on the Gulf the place Saudi Sunni allies, the Al Khalifa royal household, rule over a Shi’ite majority.
Analysts stated the rapprochement with Israel was cast partly by way of shared fears of Iran.
The opening of the Israeli embassy in Bahrain got here as the USA is urgent its conventional ally Riyadh to signal an analogous deal for Saudi Arabia, a Muslim powerhouse and residential to Islam’s holiest shrines.
Nonetheless, Riyadh has to date resisted U.S. stress and linked the transfer to the creation of a Palestinian state as a part of a two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian battle, together with different calls for.
