Israel Hayom has learned that in meetings at the Negev Summit, which concluded Monday, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and the Arab foreign ministers voiced one unequivocal demand to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken – that the US not remove Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps from its list of terrorist organizations.
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Lapid used harsh language and told Blinken, saying he would never make a deal with any terrorist organization that would allow American to be attacked if Israel remained safe. Lapid said that it was unacceptable for the IRGC to agree not to attack America [but not Israel] if they are removed from the US list of terrorist entities. Blinken did not give him a clear answer, and only said that no decision had been made on the matter.
Apart from Lapid and Blinken, foreign ministers Abdullatif al-Zayani of Bahrain, Sameh Shoukry of Egypt, Abdullah bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates, and Nasser Bourita from Morocco participated in the summit. In their final statements, all the guest officials condemned the terrorist attack in Hadera, and expressed solidarity with Israel.
Bahraini Foreign Minister al-Zayani said that his country had a strong position against terrorism, and that the need for cooperation had become more urgent following recent developments – attacks by the Iran-backed Houthis, threats by terrorist groups like Hezbollah, and the need for a solution to the Iranian nuclear threat. Al-Zayani called the new bloc formed at the summit a "mini NATO."
Lapid said, "We are today opening a door before all the peoples of the region, including the Palestinians, and offering them to replace the way of terror and destruction with a shared future of progress and success." Lapid said that the "new architecture" frightened Israel and the moderate Arab states' common enemies – primarily Iran and its satellites.
Two of the Arab guests raised the need to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians. "The solution is a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, with east Jerusalem as its capital," Shoukry said. Bourita also raised the issue.
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Bin-Zayed expressed regret that his country had made peace with Israel "Forty-three years ago, when Egypt and Israel made peace, unfortunately we lost those 43 years of knowing each other better, of working together, and of changing the narrative that many generations of Israelis and Arabs have been living. It's new for, I think, Abdullatif and Nasser and myself to be in Israel. This is our first time. So if we are curious sometimes and we want to know things and learn, it's because although Israel has been part of this region for a very long time and – we've not known each other. So it's time to catch up, to build on a stronger relationship. When I see 300,000 Israelis visiting the UAE in the last year and a half, but at the same time I see 2 million visitors visiting the Israeli pavilion in Expo in only the last six months, it says how curious and how much we want to know each other.
"And this is what I think goes against what happened yesterday. It's by our standing together, it's by our people-to-people relationship, it's by creating a better environment for our businesses to work with each other – that's the way we can go after the narrative of hate, of incitement, of terror."
Participants also agreed that they would continue to meet on a regular basis, once a year or every six months, and that the meetings would always be held in the desert. They also agreed that all parties would try to bring additional countries into the forum, and form six working groups to focus on security; the war on terrorism; tourism; education; the economy; and food security for all the countries that take part.
