President Donald Trump has announced that Bahrain will establish full diplomatic relations with Israel, following the United Arab Emirates, in another sign of shifting Middle East dynamics that are bringing Arab nations closer to Israel, isolating the Palestinians and positioning Trump as a campaign-season peacemaker.
Trump announced the news on Twitter on Friday, releasing a joint statement with Bahrain and Israel and calling the move “a historic breakthrough to further peace in the Middle East”.
The announcement follows one last month by Israel and the UAE that they would normalise relations with each other, on the condition that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel not follow through with plans to annex portions of the West Bank.
Trump administration officials said that they hoped that agreement would encourage other Arab countries with historically hostile relations toward Israel to take similar steps.
Bahrain, a tiny island kingdom off the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf, has strategic significance for Washington as the host for the US Navy’s 5th Fleet.
The agreement was brokered in large part by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has led the administration’s effort to strike a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
Read the article in The Age (from The New York Times with Reuters).