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US says Israel, Arab countries to reconvene in early 2023 for Negev Forum

December 20, 2022

White House official doesn’t specify if gathering will be for working groups or for ministers, says steps taken by incoming right-wing government will impact initiative’s success

The United States is planning a meeting in early 2023 between Israel and Arab nations that recognize it as it pushes the incoming right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu to show restraint, a US official said Tuesday.

A senior US official said Washington plans a meeting “probably in the first quarter” of 2023, to be attended by foreign ministers from the so-called Negev Forum, which met for the first time last March.

The meeting — with Israel’s now-outgoing, more moderate government — brought to the Israeli desert the foreign minister of Egypt, the first Arab state to make peace with Israel, and his counterparts from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco, which normalized relations in 2020 as part of the Abraham accords.

The accords are “near and dear to the heart of Prime Minister Netanyahu and so I imagine that he wants to continue to see that move forward,” the US official said on condition of anonymity.

“I think Israel has to factor that in,” the official said. “Depending on some of the things that Israel does, that may make it harder or easier for these countries to actually engage and participate and move forward, never mind bringing new countries into the process.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said earlier this month that the Negev Forum working groups — six panels tasked with advancing regional projects in the areas of regional security, food and water security, energy, health, education, and tourism — would convene early next year.

It was not immediately clear whether this was the gathering referred to by the US official or whether they were referencing a ministerial-level summit that Morocco is slated to host, according to Middle Eastern diplomats who spoke to The Times of Israel in October.

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