Benjamin Netanyahu
Photographer: Abir Sultan / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: Abir Sultan / AFP / Getty Images
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Attempts by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to create a pre-election stutter in connection with other normalization movements in the Middle East took another hit when Qatar denied pursuing such a plan.
Netanyahu said last week that four countries were about to establish diplomatic relations with his country, and his intelligence minister later identified Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Niger as potential partners.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister Adel Al-Jubeir said on Saturday that normalization was conditioned by the settlement of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians. A Qatari Foreign Ministry official said on Sunday that the same condition applies to his country. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the diplomatic strategy.
Netanyahu’s attempt to mix diplomacy with electoral politics sparked a fierce response from the United Arab Emirates, which in August became the first Arab nation in the Gulf to agree to normalize ties with Israel. Netanyahu planned a visit to Abu Dhabi on March 11, less than two weeks before the Israeli elections. After being canceled due to a relationship with Jordan, the United Arab Emirates’ presidential adviser, Anwar Gargash, said his country “will not be part of any domestic electorate in Israel, now or ever.”
Sultan Al Jaber, the United Arab Emirates’s minister of industry and advanced technology, has tempered expectations of Netanyahu’s claim this month that the country will invest $ 10 billion in Israeli projects, saying the studies were in a early stage and any investments will be “commercially oriented and not politically associated. ”