In response to Israel’s recent diplomatic gains in the Arab and Muslim worlds, the Palestinian Authority is reportedly pushing to convene an emergency Arab League meeting, The Jerusalem Post reported on Tuesday.
Nabil Shaath, a senior Palestinian official, told the Israeli paper, Haaretz that “there are a series of Arab and Islamic resolutions and declarations that explicitly state that there will be no normalization with Israel without a solution for the Palestinian issue based on the Arab Peace Initiative and the decisions of the international community.”
Rumored ties between Israel, and both Bahrain and Sudan, are viewed by the P.A. as normalization, which it opposes as long as there is no Palestinian state.
“What we see in recent weeks—from Netanyahu’s visit to Oman and the visit of the president of Chad to Israel, and now we talk about Bahrain, Sudan and about ties with Saudi Arabia. It raises question marks! Therefore the Arab and Islamic position needs to be clarified,” added Shaath.
Shaath accused the United States and Israel of “exploiting” the divisions among the Palestinians in order to build bridges to the Arab and Muslim world.
Sudan has denied that it is considering ties with Israel. A spokesman for the ruling party was quoted by Turkey’s Anadolu Agency news services as tying normalization with Israel to “the Palestinian cause.”
In April of this year, at a summit hosted by Saudi Arabia, the Arab League said that normalization with Israel could not take place until there was a resolution to the Palestinian problem.
