Islamist extremists were not enthusiastic about the Abraham Accords peace deal between Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain, this week.
The world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, Iran, issued an implicitly violent rejection of the accord, while Iran-backed terrorist organizations were even less subtle.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani claimed at a meeting of his cabinet on Wednesday that Israel is “committing more crimes in Palestine every day,” so nations that make peace with Israel fail to understand the Muslim religion or their “debt to the nation of Palestine.”
“How could you reach out your hands to Israel? And then you want to give them bases in the region? All the severe consequences that would arise from this are on you,” Rouhani threatened.
Iran’s terrorist proxies were on the same page as Rouhani, but even more explicit in their threats of violence.
Sheikh Naim Qassem, deputy chief of Hezbollah in Lebanon, declared that “military resistance” and “jihad” were the only ways to “take back the land of Palestine” in the wake of the peace deal.
“We should make efforts for the liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem al-Quds, and this will not be possible except through military resistance along with other forms of resistance, namely cultural, political, social resistance and etc, but the main focus of our work must be armed resistance,” he said.
Qassem denounced the UAE and Bahrain for their “betrayal of Palestine and Jerusalem al-Quds.”
“Normalizing only serves the interests of Israel and has no benefit for Palestine and the Palestinian cause,” he asserted.
“The normalization challenge is an opportunity for us to separate the supporters of Palestine from the servants of Israel. The axis of resistance is the only axis that works in line with the interests of Palestine and will build the future. That is why the UAE and anyone who normalizes with Israel will get nothing but shame,” he said.
The al-Qassam brigades, the “military wing” of Hamas, vowed “the Zionist enemy will pay a heavy price for any aggression against the Palestinian nation or resistance in Gaza.” The threat was issued after Israeli warplanes and helicopters reportedly struck a Hamas training camp in the northern Gaza Strip.
Writing at Israel Hayom on Tuesday, Fiamma Nirenstein suggested the “Tehran-Ankara axis and its friends, soldiers, and proxies” are right to be afraid that their rackets are falling apart, because the Abraham Accords between Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, and almost certainly more nations may mark the end of “pan-Arabism, tribal and sectarian tensions, corruption, violence and Islamism.”
It is therefore unsurprising that the purveyors of sectarian tension, violence, and Islamism would make one last pitch before the Abraham Accords run them out of business.
In the course of complaining that the UAE and Bahrain made peace with Israel without securing any significant concessions from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Daily Sabah – published in Turkey, the other end of that “Tehran-Ankara axis” Nirenstein mentioned – stumbled into the same point as Nirenstein:
For decades, the one thing Palestinians felt they had in their corner as they battled for international recognition was the support of a unified Arab world. Many Palestinians now fear that this disappeared, alongside their dreams of having a state of their own.
In other words, the region may be about to awaken from a long and bloody nightmare, with endless violence no longer justified by unrealistic ambitions. The violence is unlikely to disappear, but it may become difficult for Iran and its proxies to convince the Palestinians that they will benefit from any of the horrors committed in their name.
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