Arab League

TEL AVIV – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that an Israeli plane made a historic first flight over Sudan only two weeks after he met with the Arab state’s leader in Uganda.

TEL AVIV – Israel and the Muslim-Arab country of Sudan will begin normalizing ties, Israeli officials said after leaders of both countries met in Uganda, in a move that has been denounced as a “stab in the back” by the Palestinians. 

TEL AVIV – The Arab League on Saturday unanimously rejected President Donald Trump’s unveiled peace plan, prompting a senior White House official to predict the Palestinians’ fate will never change.

TEL AVIV – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced he was cutting all ties with both the U.S. and Israel in response to President Donald Trump’s recently unveiled peace plan, including security coordination in the West Bank. 

U.S. President Donald Trump issued a public warning to Iran late Sunday, suggesting it will be the “end” of the Islamic republic  if a conflict breaks out between the two countries.

TEL AVIV – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told Arab states on Sunday that President Donald Trump’s long-awaited peace plan had “nothing to offer” the Palestinians and added that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had no interest in peace. 

TEL AVIV – The Arab League on Sunday pledged $100 million per month to the Palestinian Authority to cover the funds suspended by Israel in taxes and tariffs owed to the PA over the latter’s so-called “pay-for”slay” scheme paying salaries to terrorists and their families.

TEL AVIV – The US has asked international banks to place a financial embargo on the Palestinian Authority in a bid to exert pressure on the Palestinians to accept the Trump administration’s long-awaited peace plan, a senior PA official said. 

The Arab League announced on Monday that they have not yet reached a consensus on reinstating membership for Syria, which they froze out of the League in 2011 at the dawn of its brutal civil war. Discussions about reinstating Syria will evidently continue.

BEIRUT — Lebanon used an Arab economic summit on Sunday to call for the return of Syrian refugees to safe areas of their war-torn country, where the nearly eight-year civil war is still underway despite a recent series of government victories.

Contents: UAE reopens embassy in Syria to counter influence from Iran; Arabs scramble to regain influence in Syria

Syria says the United Arab Emirates will reopen its embassy in Damascus for the first time in seven years.

The Arab League warned Brazil’s President-elect Jair Bolsonaro against moving Brazil’s Israeli Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on Monday, claiming that such a move would damage relations with member states.

The diplomatic crisis over Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul does not appear to have damaged the Sunni Arab alliance led by Saudi Arabia.

Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, expressed “confidence” on Wednesday that US President Donald Trump’s Mideast peace plan will capitalize on thawing ties between the Jewish state and the Arab world.

Senior Palestinian Authority official Saeb Erekat on Monday urged Arab countries to sever diplomatic ties with the United States, Guatemala and Paraguay over the countries’ relocation of their embassies to Jerusalem.

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman on Sunday slammed Iran’s “blatant interference” in the region and lashed out at the US over Jerusalem as Arab leaders met in the kingdom for their annual summit.

BRUSSELS — European Union and Arab League countries insist that Jerusalem must be the joint capital of Israel and a future Palestinian state, as the U.S. prepares to move its embassy there in a step angering the Arab world.

TEL AVIV – After initially banning the latest Steven Spielberg film over the director’s support of Israel, Lebanon is set to release it, a Lebanese official said Wednesday.

Israeli actress and Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot caused a social media uproar when she attended the National Board of Review awards in a dress by Lebanese fashion designer Elie Saab.

TEL AVIV – Backed by the Arab League, the Palestinian leadership is going ahead with its plan to seek recognition as a full member state in the United Nations in response President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said.

TEL AVIV – Egypt on Sunday categorically denied a New York Times report that claimed Cairo had tacitly accepted President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and took surreptitious steps to persuade the Egyptian public that it was a good thing, despite vociferous public declarations in protest of the move.

TEL AVIV – Arab nations will push for recognition of “Palestine” with eastern Jerusalem as its capital following President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital last month.

Speaking from a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo on Saturday, Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil called for “pre-emptive measures” against the U.S. decision to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. He said this should begin with “diplomatic measures” and then proceed to “political, then economic and financial sanctions” against the United States.

On Sunday the Vatican issued a communiqué appealing for cooperation with groups like the Arab League that are concerned with the recent decision by the United States to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Leaders of France and the European Union have joined with Jordan, Egypt, Turkey and the Arab League in expressing their opposition to reported plans of President Donald Trump to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

JERUSALEM — Vociferous Arab and Muslim opposition was building Tuesday to any possible U.S. recognition of the hotly contested city of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The Arab League chief said on Sunday a decision by US President Donald Trump to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital would boost fanaticism and violence, and not serve the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

TEL AVIV — The foreign ministers of Arab countries officially labeled the Iran-backed murderous group Hezbollah as a terrorist organization at a meeting in Cairo on Sunday.

TEL AVIV – The normalization of diplomatic relations between Bahrain and Israel may be announced in the near future, Bahraini and Western officials were quoted as saying over the weekend.