WEST BANK (Dispatches) – The Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movement has condemned United Arab Emirates officials over receiving Zionist prime minister Naftali Bennett, stressing that any normalization and alliance with the occupying regime amounts to “betrayal to Palestine.”
“Bennett’s reception would help the criminal [Zionist] regime beef up its security and would be an attempt to legitimize the regime’s false existence, wash the hands stained with the blood of Palestinian children and innocent people, and exonerate Zionist murderers and terrorists from their crimes against the entire Palestinian nation,” the movement said in a statement released on Monday.
The occupying regime’s prime minister met the UAE’s de facto ruler on Monday after becoming the first high-ranking regime official to visit the Persian Gulf state, more than a year after the two sides agreed to establish formal relations under a U.S.-brokered deal.
Bennett had a meeting with Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ) at his private palace, Zionist officials said, following the premier’s arrival in the Emirati capital late on Sunday.
The UAE officially inaugurated its embassy in the occupied territories on July 14. The Zionist regime opened its embassy in the Emirati capital in late June.
Netanyahu signed agreements with the Emirati foreign minister and Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Abdullatif Al Zayani during an official ceremony hosted by former U.S. president Donald Trump at the White House on September 15 last year.
Palestinians, who seek an independent state in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip with East Al-Quds as its capital, view the deals as a betrayal of their cause.
A Bahraini rights group has also rebuked the Bahraini regime for its heavy-handed crackdown on opponents of normalization with the Zionist regime after the inauguration of the occupying regime’s embassy in the tiny Persian Gulf kingdom.
In a recent report published by Bahrain Forum for Human Rights, the group recorded human rights violations committed by the Al Khalifah regime in late September and October against Bahrainis who opposed normalization with the regime.
Following the inauguration of the embassy in Bahrain on September 30, anti-normalization protests intensified across the tiny kingdom, especially in the neighborhood of Ras Rumman in the capital Manama, the group said.
At the time, the report said, calls for peaceful demonstrations or expressions of popular rejection against the opening of the regime’s embassy in Bahrain spread from various parties.