Israel hosted a desert meeting with Morocco, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and the United States. On the agenda: a possible new nuclear deal with Iran.
Israel had imagined it all so beautifully: a summit at Sde Boker in the Negev desert, the country’s founder David Ben-Gurion’s last home and resting place, a kibbutz oasis far from civilization, was supposed to bring together old friends and new partners. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled from Warsaw, where he explored options to support Kiev with Ukraine’s foreign and defense ministers. And the foreign ministers of Morocco, Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) accepted the invitation of Yair Lapid, the host.
But the meeting was initially under a bad star. On Sunday night, two Israeli Arabs opened fire at a bus stop in the coastal city of Hadera, halfway between Tel Aviv and Haifa. The attackers, two 19-year-old sympathizers of the Islamic State terrorist group, killed two Israeli soldiers before dying in a hail of bullets from Israeli security forces. It was the second attack in a few days, and nervousness is building in Israel ahead of the start of the Islamic month of fasting, Ramadan and the Passover holiday.