Tue 15 September 2020:
Lolwah Alkhater asserted that there will be no normalisation while Palestinians continue to live under occupation.
Qatar’s assistant foreign minister has assured that Doha will not follow the footsteps of the UAE and Bahrain in normalising relations with Israel.
In an interview with Bloomberg on Monday, Lolwah Alkhater asserted that there will be no normalisation while Palestinians continue to live under occupation.
“We don’t think that normalisation was the core of this conflict and hence it can’t be the answer,” Alkhater said.
“The core of this conflict is about the drastic conditions that the Palestinians are living under [as] “people without a country, living under occupation.”
In August, US President Donald Trump announced the UAE became the third Arab country and first Gulf Arab state to normalise ties with Israel, with Bahrain following suit on Tuesday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said his country is in talks with other Arab and Muslim leaders now about normalising relations, following the deals with UAE and, decades ago, Egypt and Jordan.
The UAE’s decision to normalise ties with Israel has been welcomed by some Arab countries, but despite cheerleading from the US, others have rejected the idea and many approach it with caution.
The Palestinians have condemned the deal as a stab in the back by a major Arab player while they still lack a state of their own.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was on a Middle East visit last month, expressed optimism that more Arab nations will sign up.
In 2017, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, and Egypt cut relations with Qatar after accusing it of backing terrorism and siding with their regional rival Iran.
Doha has emphatically denied the charges.
The four countries imposed a blockade by land, air and sea, and ordered the expulsion of Qatari nationals.
The alliance has issued a raft of terms Qatar must accept before it will lift the embargo. Qatar has rejected the terms and characterised them as an attempt to “impose hegemony” on it.
The demands including the closure of the Doha-based Al-Jazeera news network and shutting a Turkish military base in the emirate.
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