Following the success of Abraham Accords, talks are apparently underway with Oman, Sudan, the Comoros, Djibouti and Mauritania.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

A senior Palestinian official revealed what the Palestinian Authority believes are the next five predominantly Muslim countries to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, Kan News reports.

Palestinian Authority official Ahmed Majdalani said that the PA says Israel is in talks with with Oman, Sudan, the Comoros, Djibouti and Mauritania, who are expected to normalize relations with the Jewish State.

“The approach that there can be peace with the Arabs without peace with the Palestinians is an illusion,” said Majdalani, a former PA cabinet minister and currently a senior member of the PLO Executive Committee. The Palestinians are furious that the two Arab states made peace with Israel.

On Tuesday, Israel signed peace deals with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain under which those two Gulf States will establish full diplomatic relations.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the accords signal the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East.

“This is a turning point in history in that the Palestinian veto has been broken that for a quarter of a century prevented us from achieving peace. Now the dam has been broken,” Netanyahu said in a Channel 20 interview.

“That’s a very big change. It’s the beginning of the process of reconciliation, or the end of Israel’s conflict with the Arab countries. And other countries will join, as President Trump said. We’re working on it.”

U.S. President Donald Trump, who hosted the historic signing ceremony of the Abraham Accords at the White House, said Tuesday that up to nine additional countries were expected to join the UAE and Bahrain in ending the boycott against relations with Israel. Trump did not list which countries he was referring to, but said specifically that he had a conversation with the King of Saudi Arabia.

Trump and Netanyahu have both mentioned the Gulf nation of Oman and Sudan in eastern Africa as being the next countries in line, and both were visited recently by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Israel’s former Foreign Ministry director, Dr. Dore Gold, visited Africa in 2016, and while his itinerary was not released, he is suspected to have held talks with Comoros, Djibouti and Mauritania to pave the way for future relations.

Djibouti is about the same size as Israel but has less than one million inhabitants. It is located on the east coast of Africa beside the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, a strategic shipping channel that borders war-torn Yemen. It is known that Iran has been trying to exert influence to gain control of the area.

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The Palestinian leadership will likely suspend recognition of Israel and reject US eligibility to oversee peace negotiations at upcoming PLO Executive Committee meeting.

By: Margot Dudkevitch

The Palestinian leadership intends to redefine its relationship with Israel and may even suspend its recognition of the Jewish State, Ahmad Majdalani a member of the PLO Executive Committee, told Voice of Palestine radio.

Details of the interview published by the official Palestinian website Wafa on Thursday quoted Majdalani as saying that “recognition could only be done between two states.” He said the Palestinian Authority (PA) was created to lead its people from occupation to independence and Palestinian statehood.

The most important recommendation will be to reject US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Majdalani said, stressing that the American administration is no longer qualified to oversee the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Trump’s announcement gives the Palestinians the right to search for an alternative process based on United Nations resolutions, he declared.

The PLO Executive Committee is due to convene on Saturday in Ramallah and is expected to adopt the recommendations, which will be submitted before the Central Council on Sunday.

The PA has often threatened to sever security ties with Israel, to which Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman responded said that Israel can cope without a working security arrangement with the Palestinians.

“We’ve managed for many years without security cooperation, we’ll manage now as well,” he asserted last summer, following  PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’ announcement that he would cancel security coordination with Israel.

The Israeli defense minister emphasized that the security coordination basically benefits the Palestinians.

Speaking at an event in Jerusalem last month, after a new threat from Abbas, Liberman said that the Palestinian leader would not be alive today if not for the security cooperation between Israel and the PA.

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