DUBAI (Dispatches) – A delegation of senior Zionist officials made their way to Abu Dhabi on Sunday to prepare for the upcoming Arab-Zionist Negev Summit that is set to be held in Morocco later this year.
The meeting comes despite recent tension between Muslim nations and the occupying regime over the status quo at Al-Asqa Mosque.
Earlier this week, the regime’s far-right national minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque’s courtyards in occupied East Al-Quds in a move that inflamed tensions.
The UAE, which normalized relations with the occupying regime in 2020 as part of the U.S.-backed so-called Abraham Accords, released a statement on Tuesday condemning the storming of Al-Aqsa.
“The UAE today strongly condemned the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque courtyard by an Israeli minister under the protection of Israeli forces,” said the statement.
It called on “Israeli authorities to assume responsibility for reducing escalation and instability in the region”.
Following the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque, the UAE and China called for a United Nations Security Council meeting to discuss the actions of the Zionist regime.
The Zionist delegation to Abu Dhabi is expected to include lower-level engagements between ministerial staff to iron out their mutual agendas.
The Negev Summit was first held last year at Sde Boker kibbutz in the occupied territories, which saw the foreign ministers of the regime, the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco and the United States come together. Another session was held in October via Zoom.
The development comes as a new survey has found that an overwhelming majority of people in Arab countries oppose normalization of relations with the occupying regime, and consider the occupying regime’s policies to be a threat to security and stability of the region.
The opinion poll, conducted by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS), indicated that 84% of the participants disapprove any recognition of the Zionist regime by their home countries, the Jewish News website reported.
The London-based website went on to say that 36% cited “colonialist occupying power in Palestine” as the main reason for opposing recognition of the regime while 9% cited its expansionist policies and the intention to dominate more Arab territory as the reason for their opposition.
The latest findings were based on face-to-face interviews with 33,000 individuals from 14 Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Bahrain and Sudan which have already normalized ties with the regime.