US, Arab states, Israel hold landmark meeting in desert kibbutz

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the top diplomats of Israel and four Arab states held a landmark meeting on Monday to discuss issues from the Iran nuclear negotiations to the global shock waves of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The talks brought together for the first time on Israeli soil the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco, which all normalised ties with the Jewish state in 2020, and of Egypt, which made peace with Israel in 1979.

Its late-Sunday opening, in a kibbutz deep in the Negev desert, was marred by a shooting attack in northern Israel that killed two police officers and was claimed by Islamic State group, which has rarely managed to stage attacks inside Israel.

And early on Monday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s office confirmed he had caught Covid-19, a day after he held closed-door meetings with Blinken, followed by joint press conference without masks.

The State Department said Blinken, who was out jogging in the Negev early on Monday, was the only member of the US delegation considered a “close contact” of Bennett’s and that he would follow public health guidelines “including by masking and undergoing appropriate testing”.

The Negev meeting takes place as the US and European allies have expressed quiet frustration that Middle East countries have generally not shown strong support for efforts to back Ukraine following Russia’s invasion and have not distanced themselves from Moscow.

But Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas rebuffed any pressure to criticise Russia, instead castigating the West for “double standards” that he said penalised Moscow while ignoring Israel’s “crimes” against the Palestinians.