Palestinian Business Chief Hopes UAE, Bahrain Will Push Israel to Halt Settlements

RAWABI, West Financial institution (Reuters) - A leading Palestinian enterprise govt stated on Monday that new Gulf Arab ties with Israel, condemned by Palestinian leaders, could also be an possibility to utilize clean strain to halt Jewish settlement in occupied land.

Bashar Masri, a Palestinian-American who operates two of the Palestinians’ biggest holding companies, explained the Palestinians have to find a way to flip agreements Israel struck last thirty day period with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain into “a beneficial matter for us”.

Underneath the U.S.-brokered diplomatic push, Israel agreed to suspend strategies to annex pieces of the occupied West Lender.

Palestinian leaders have known as Arab agreements to normalise relations with Israel a blow to their quest for an impartial point out in the West Lender, Gaza and East Jerusalem, territory Israel captured in a 1967 war.

Masri, 59, reported the Palestinian concept to the UAE and Bahrain ought to now be: “Hey, why really don’t you pressure Israel, who you’re speaking to, to stop the settlements?”.

“I hope they can switch these agreements to stress Israel into concessions for the Palestinians,” he stated.

But Masri, chairman of Massar Global, advised Reuters he was uncertain that halting settlement growth in the West Bank would be a priority for Gulf Arab states that agreed to formal ties with Israel in part around shared concern above Iran.

Most nations perspective the settlements that Israel has built on occupied land as illegal. Israel disputes this.

Israel has hailed ties with the UAE and Bahrain as a key small business prospect, and Masri claimed Palestinian enterprises would not be inherently opposed to accepting expenditure from the two Gulf nations.

Massar International oversees and manages a lot more than 30 subsidiaries and investments in finance, tech, agriculture, media and serious estate, which include Rawabi, the 1st prepared Palestinian city in the West Financial institution.

Masri claimed that now that thoughts in excess of the discounts have calmed down - “we burned the flags” - Palestinians have “no alternative but to be optimistic”.

“Our enemies want us to give up hope. If we give up hope, they have accurately what they want, and there will be no Palestine, and no Palestinian men and women,” he reported.

(Reporting by Rami Ayyub Modifying by Jeffrey Heller and Peter Graff)