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Israel opens new embassy in Bahrain, agrees to boost trade relations
Al Jazeera, September 4, 2023:
Israel’s foreign minister has agreed with his Bahraini counterpart to boost trade relations, during his first visit to one of the two Gulf Arab states to establish ties with Israel.
“The foreign minister and I agreed that we should work together to increase the number of direct flights, the tourism, the trade volume, the investment,” Eli Cohen said during a ceremony to inaugurate Israel’s new embassy in Bahrain on Monday.
The embassy in the capital Manama will replace the first embassy Israel opened in 2021, a year after it established diplomatic relations with Bahrain as part of the United States-brokered Abraham Accords.
Under the accords, Israel also established ties with the United Arab Emirates and Morocco.
Monday’s ceremony was attended by Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdullatif al-Zayani, who said the “new embassy assumes a pivotal role” in growing collaboration between the two countries.
Zayani said his talks with Cohen on Monday resulted in an agreement on advancing “relations across the broadest range of fields, including, economic, investment, trade and other areas”……
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SEP 6, 2023 9:00 AM BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS
Less than two weeks after a controversy involving an impromptu meeting between Israel’s Foreign Affairs Minister Eli Cohen and his Libyan counterpart Najla Mangoush, Israel has opened up a new embassy in Bahrain, and the two countries have agreed to boost trade. The ceremony in Bahrain to inaugurate Israel’s new embassy included Eli Cohen and an Israeli business delegation “of more than 30 companies working in high-tech, logistics and real estate.”
The agreement is a continuation of the Abraham accords negotiated by Donald Trump, which also includes the United Arab Emirates and Morocco. The accords benefit all parties despite the surrounding political pressures.
Eli Cohen stated to the Bahraini newspaper Al-Ayyam: “No one in the world is more interested in ending the issue with the Palestinians than Israel.”
But the founding charters of the principal Palestinian political organizations still include the stated goal of obliterating Israel in an endless jihad (“resistance”). That jihad has continued since well before the day Israel declared independence.
Although the Biden administration has been in talks with Saudi Arabia about a normalization agreement with Israel, in early August, Israel ruled out any unreasonable concessions to the Palestinians to secure that normalization. That rules out a return to the pre-1967 borders, a withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, and making East Jerusalem the capital of a Palestinian state.
As it stands today, Saudi Arabia finds it a “provocation to all Muslims around the world” when Jews visit the Temple Mount.
One needs to recognize a key difference between Saudi Arabia and the small Arab countries which have normalized with Israel: Saudi Arabia is the keeper of Sunni Islam and is founded upon Wahhabism.
Saudi Arabia also recently resumed ties with Shia Iran, and in April, the Saudis hosted top Fatah and Hamas delegations.
With two Gulf countries and Morocco now trading with Israel, there should be a hysterical outcry from some other Islamic countries. Palestinians must be beginning to see the writing on the wall, their time is coming to an end. But western media will never admit that.
Egypt: Muslims enraged at wedding video of dancing and
women with heads uncovered inside historic mosque
SEP 7, 2023 8:00 AM BY ROBERT SPENCER
There were even calls for legal action.
Here once again we see the Ayatollah Khomeini’s famous dictum: “Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious.”
Why would God give us a sense of humour if we were never to use it? Were we not made in the image of God, or did humour come as part of the fall? How ridiculous!
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Video: Wedding and dancing in Cairo’s historic Mohammad Ali Mosque:
Social media erupts in outrage
by Khitam Al Amir, Gulf News, September 3, 2023
Dubai: A wedding ceremony replete with dance and song was recently held inside the Mohammad Ali Mosque in Cairo, triggering social uproar.
Social media users widely circulated a video clip allegedly capturing the event in the courtyard of the mosque located within Salah Al Deen Castle.
The footage displayed attendees dancing to a DJ’s tunes, with some women appearing without head coverings, seemingly without regard for the religious sanctity of the venue.
Such actions within the mosque, a revered place of worship, drew sharp criticism from social media users.
They deemed it disrespectful, emphasising that mosques are sacred houses of God designated for worship and not for dancing or non-traditional celebrations.
The incident led to calls for legal action against the event organisers for purportedly violating the mosque’s sanctity. As of now, there was no official statements regarding the incident….
Several dead as fighting rages in Lebanon Palestinian refugee camp
Three fighters and a civilian were killed Saturday in clashes at a south Lebanon Palestinian camp, official media reported, as Prime Minister Najib Mikati rebuked Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas over the spiralling violence.
Issued on: 10/09/2023 - 03:17; 3 min
By: NEWS WIRES
A vehicle from the Lebanese army drives outside the Ain al-Helweh Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon's southern coastal city of Sidon on September 9, 2023, amid renewed clashes between the Fatah movement and Islamists. © Mahmoud Zayyat, AFP
Renewed fighting broke out late Thursday in Ain al-Helweh refugee camp on the outskirts of the coastal city of Sidon, just weeks after deadly violence pitted members of Abbas's Fatah movement against Islamist militants.
Ongoing clashes inside the camp on Saturday killed "two people from Fatah" and an Islamist, while "a civilian was killed by a stray bullet" outside the camp, Lebanon's official National News Agency (NNA) said, reporting dozens of others wounded.
"What is taking place does not serve the Palestinian cause at all and is a serious offence to the Lebanese state" and the city of Sidon, Mikati told Abbas in a phone call on Saturday, his office said in a statement.
Since when does Islamic violence have to make sense?
Mikati emphasised "the priority of ending military operations and cooperating with Lebanese security forces to address tensions", according to the statement on X, formerly Twitter.
Heavy clashes broke out on Saturday morning after calm had largely prevailed overnight, an AFP correspondent in Sidon said, reporting the sound of automatic and heavy weapons.
The fighting was focused on a school compound belonging to the United Nations' agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, a source in the camp's Palestinian leadership told AFP on condition of anonymity.
UNRWA had previously warned that militants were occupying its schools in the camp.
Ain al-Helweh is home to more than 54,000 registered refugees and thousands of Palestinians who joined them in recent years from Syria, fleeing war in the neighbouring country.
The camp, Lebanon's largest, was created for Palestinians who were driven out or fled during the 1948 war at the time of Israel's creation.
'Going through hell'
The Lebanese army, which by long-standing convention does not enter the camps and leaves Palestinian factions to handle security there, called on "all relevant parties in the camp to stop the fighting". It said it was taking the "necessary measures and making the required contacts to stop the clashes, which endanger the lives of innocent" people.
Dozens of families fled as the fighting intensified, carrying bags packed with basic necessities such as bread, water and medicine, the AFP correspondent said.
Camp resident Mohammed Badran, 32, said he would "sleep on the streets" with his wife and two terrified children rather than return before the fighting ended.
"We were going through hell," he said from a Sidon mosque where his and other families have taken refuge.
An AFP correspondent saw aid workers setting up tents outside the municipal stadium in Sidon to shelter camp dwellers displaced by the fighting. "The municipality is coordinating with the Red Cross to set up 16 tents as a first step," Mustafa Hijazi, an official in charge of disaster management at Sidon municipality, told AFP. "We expect to erect more (tents), to accommodate about 250 people," he added.
A public hospital directly adjacent to the camp transferred all its patients to other facilities because of the danger, its director Ahmad al-Samadi told AFP.
Five days of clashes that began in late July left 13 people dead and dozens wounded, in the worst outbreak of violence in the camp in years. That fighting erupted after the death of an Islamist militant, followed by an ambush that killed five Fatah members including a military leader.
Genesis 16:12 - "He will be a wild donkey of a man, and his hand will be against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him; he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.”
The United Nations' resident coordinator in Lebanon, Imran Riza, on Friday urged "armed groups to stop the fighting in the camp" and to "immediately" vacate schools belonging to the UNRWA. "The use by armed groups of schools amounts to gross violations" of international law, Riza said in a statement.
Lebanon hosts an estimated 250,000 Palestinian refugees, according to the UN agency.
Most live in Lebanon's 12 official camps, and face a variety of legal restrictions including on employment.
They actually have more freedom living in Israel.
(AFP)
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