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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Washington Post recently published an article on efforts by Arab states to expand relations with Israel, which many of these countries still view as a historic adversary. A pro-Palestine activist criticized the move, while a Kurdish expert said the details of the report were not surprising.
The Washington Post said it obtained unclassified US military files showing that six Arab nations — Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, and Jordan — have been quietly expanding military cooperation with Israel, even as they publicly accused it of committing genocide in Gaza.
You can condemn Israel. You can call it a genocide. But the fact that you are building trade relations, the fact that you are sending food and supplies to Israel, while Palestinians in Gaza are starving, and this includes Arab countries, of the Gulf countries, it includes Jordan, it includes Egypt, you are enabling the continuation of that genocide. So condemning it is meaningless," Riham Barghouti, a pro-Palestine activist in New York, told Rudaw.
According to the report, the main purpose of this growing cooperation between Israel and the Sunni Arab states was to counter Iran — a shared regional threat.
Mohammed A. Salih from Foreign Policy Research Institute said he was not surprised by the report.
“The details in the report about cooperation between some of the Arab States and Israel were not really that surprising, given the major concerns and worries that some of these Arab states have had over the past couple of decades about the expansion of Iranian influence and role in the region," he said.
Namo Abdulla contributed to this article.
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