Moroccan Prime Minister Saadeddine Othmani said the country opposed any normalization of relations with Israel, which would only encourage its repression against the Palestinians. [102] On 20 September, hundreds of people protested against the Peace Agreement of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain with Israel and burned an Israeli flag. Protesters called both countries „traitors,“ while criticizing the United States and „Zionist allies.“ They also called for any normalization with Israel to be criminalized. [103] Yousef Al Otaiba, the UAE`s ambassador to the United States, issued a statement on 13 August in which he hailed the agreement as a „victory for diplomacy and for the region,“ adding how it „reduces tensions and creates new energy for positive change.“ [7] [47] On 17 August, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu declared that Israel was launching direct flights to the United Arab Emirates using Saudi Airspace. [140] Netanyahu`s office and other officials later denied reports of authorization to sell F-35 fighter jets to the United States after the agreement. [141] Emirati Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash said in an interview with the Atlantic Council that the peace agreement must remove all obstacles to the acquisition of the jets, while any sale would take years to negotiate and deliver, and the UAE had not reapplyed after the agreement. [142] If the pact were respected, the pact would make the UAE only the third Arab country to maintain normal diplomatic relations with Israel, with Egypt, which signed a peace agreement in 1979, and Jordan, which signed a treaty in 1994. It could reorganise the long-running impasse in the region and perhaps lead other Arab nations to follow suit by forging an increasingly explicit alliance with Israel against their mutual enemy in Iran, while at least for the time being removing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu`s explosive annexation plan. Thus Netanyahu, as he has done repeatedly in public and in private, finds himself in a rather familiar defamation of Iranian faults, Iranian misdeeds and how Israel and the Gulf States must ally themselves against this Iranian threat.
Otaiba nods. He agrees with everything Netanyahu says.
