Middle East Monitor / September 22, 2020
The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) commended Qatar and Algeria for refusing to normalise relations with Israel before the occupation of a Palestinian territories comes to an end.
“We highly appreciate the affirmation of the sisterly State of Qatar concerning its position [towards the Palestinian cause],” Secretary-General of the PLO Executive Committee, Dr. Saeb Erekat, said on Twitter on Sunday.
Erekat re-tweeted the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ statement in which it affirmed Doha’s position demanding an end of the Israeli occupation and establishment of a Palestinian State with Jerusalem as its capital.
Last week, a spokesperson of Qatar’s foreign ministry ruled out normalizing her country’s relations with Israel, saying it was not the answer to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict.
“We don’t think that normalisation was the core of this conflict and hence it can’t be the answer,” Lolwah Al-Khater said in an interview with Bloomberg last week.
Meanwhile, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune deplored all forms of normalisation with Israel and mocked Bahrain and the UAE for “scrambling” to build ties with the occupation state.
“We have noticed a kind of scramble towards normalisation. This is something we will never participate in, nor bless,” Tebboune said during a televised press briefing on Sunday evening.
This comes one week after the UAE and Bahrain signed normalisation deals with Israel at the White House.
Abu Dhabi said the deal was an effort to stave off Tel Aviv’s planned annexation of the occupied West Bank, however, opponents believe normalisation efforts have been in the offing for many years as Israeli officials have made official visits to the UAE and attended conferences in the country which had no diplomatic or other ties with the occupation state.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu however denied this saying annexation is not off the table, but has simply been delayed.
