Palestine Quits Arab League Chairmanship to protest against Israeli deals

Palestine has quit its chairmanship of Arab League meetings, a step that reportedly taken to condemn the establishment of ties with Israel.

According to the details, the foreign minister of Palestine said we see the deals that the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed with Israel in Washington a week ago as a betrayal of their cause and a blow to their quest for an independent state in Israeli-occupied territory.

It was reported that Palestine was to chair Arab League meetings for the next six months, but Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki told that it no longer wanted the position.

Maliki said “Palestine has decided to concede its right to chair the League’s council [of foreign ministers] at its current session. There is no honour in seeing Arabs rush towards normalisation during its presidency,”

He said Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit had been informed of the Palestinian decision.

The deal between Israel and UAE has created a deep crisis in the Arab League and the accord was followed by a similar collapse by the Kingdom of Bahrain, Maliki said.

Earlier this month, Hundreds of Palestinians took to the streets in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip to protest against Emirati and Bahraini normalization agreements with Israel.

The treaties were signed at the White House. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu met Bahraini and Emirati officials. 

Demonstrations were organized in the West Bank cities of Nablus and Hebron and in Gaza. Protests were also held in Ramallah. People were seen holding Palestinian flags and wearing face masks. 

Also Read

Qatar refuses to restore ties with Israel

Qatar has refused to restore its ties with  Israel, sources in the...

Banners were displayed reading “Treason”, “No to normalization with the occupier”, and “The agreements of shame”.

One of the Palestinian demonstrator Emad Essa from Gaza said if people walk through the coastal enclave “you’ll see hundreds of Gazan youth who have lost their legs and got crippled for life for just for merely protesting against the Israeli blockade”.  

He told the international news agency, “And in the West Bank and Jerusalem, the Israeli bulldozers continue to demolish Palestinian homes and ethnically cleanse the Palestinians out of their villages and cities on a daily basis,” 

“That’s just the tip of the iceberg of Israeli crimes against the Palestinians, and the UAE and Bahrain somehow chose to reward Israel for these crimes by making agreements with it. The deals are stains of shame on the forehead of those leaders who sold the Palestinian cause for a very cheap price.”

The Palestinian Unified National Command of Popular Resistance called for protests to reject deals. Activists on social media launched the hashtag “Black Day”.