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The view from Egypt, which really wants to be acknowledged as a macher in the Arab world. [AlAhram] Saudi Crown-Prince Mohammed bin Salman
...Crown Prince and modernizer of Saudi Arabia as of 2016. The Turks hate him, so he must be all right, despite the occasional brutal murder of Qatar-owned journalists. As crown prince, Moe has quietly jettisoned his country's policy of trying to impose its religion on the rest of the world...
paid Cairo a two-day visit on Monday to discuss Biden’s upcoming visit to Jeddah. Bahraini King Hamad
...King of Bahrain (since 14 February 2002), having previously been its emir (from 6 March 1999). He is a Sunni, while the rest of Bahrain is predominantly Shiite...
bin Eissa al-Khalifa and Jordanian King Abdullah II had already met with President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi in Sharm El-Sheikh to the same end. Both meetings confirm Egypt’s central role in reaching a united Arab stand ahead of the widely anticipated, mid-July meeting between the US president and leaders of nine Arab nations: the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, Egypt, Jordan and Iraq.
Continued from Page 2
Ahead of his first visit to an Arab country since taking office 18 months ago, Biden will stop in Israel and Paleostine for meetings with top Israeli government officials and Paleostinian President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas
...aka Abu Mazen, a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial. While no Yasser Arafat, he has his own brand of evil, just a little more lowercase....
. The Democratic administration has long promised to bring the grinding of the peace processor back on track, after it was damaged nearly to the point of collapse under the Trump administration. So far, little if anything has been achieved, making it difficult for Arab leaders who will meet Biden in Jeddah to interact positively with ongoing US efforts to form a new joint security alliance against Iranian threats to the Arab Gulf region, Yemen
...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of...
, Lebanon Hezbollahstan
...The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years. It produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. That's three statements. Only the first is subjective....
and Iraq.
Trump had disregarded all key pillars of that grinding of the peace processor since it was launched in Oslo in 1993: the exchange of land for peace, and linking the normalisation of ties between Israel and Arab countries to progress in the two-state solution. He recognised occupied East Jerusalem as Israel’s "united" capital, closed the Paleostinian Embassy in Washington and shut down the US Consulate in East Jerusalem, which endorsed Washington’s refusal to recognise Israel’s unilateral decision to annex that part of the disputed city which was occupied in 1967, like the rest of Paleostinian territories in the West Bank and Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamaswith about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response ...
. Instead, Trump and his infamous son-in-law Jarred Kushner pushed for normalisation agreements between Israel and several Arab countries, known as the Abraham Accords, while promising billions of dollars in aid to Paleostinians, imagining that this would be a fair offer in return for giving up the aspiration to an independent Paleostinian state.
The Biden administration, the same old faces in slightly different places, the same old ideas, the same old graft
...the collection of boodlers, grifters, hangers-on, and self-proclaimed experts affiliated with the Biden Crime Family. Entrusted with an entire nation as the result of a suspicious election, they set about happily implementing stuff they absorbed in college, all of which blew up and splattered the rest of us...
sought to distance itself from those steps, but no tangible measures have been taken to revive peace talks between Israel and Paleostinians. The announcement by Israel’s fragile ruling coalition on Monday that it would call for new elections, expected by autumn, is certainly going to be the common Israeli excuse to escape from taking any steps towards reviving serious peace talks with the Paleostinians. On the Iran
 ...Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979...
confrontation front, any Israeli government in office, especially if right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu makes a comeback, will remain a central issue, if not the only one. Netanyahu’s possible return to office as prime minister would likely lead to more hard-line language and stands on Iran, and a return to the total disregard of any attempt to reach peace with the Paleostinians.
The consultations that took place in Cairo and Sharm El-Sheikh are a necessary prelude to ensure that Arab leaders will speak in a united voice when they meet Biden in Jeddah to discuss various thorny topics, including Iran, the dead Paleostinian-Israeli grinding of the peace processor and, more recently, the devastating effect of the Russia-Ukraine war on the region. The soaring prices of basic commodities, such as wheat and cooking oil, as well as fuel, has added tremendous pressure on Egypt’s budget, nearly doubling the cost of its imports.
Al-Sisi and Bin Salman discussed the vital role Saudi Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. Fifteen of the nineteen WTC hijackers were Saudis, and most major jihadi commanders were Saudis, to include Osama bin Laden. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman quietly folded that tent in 2016, doing terrible things to the guys running it, and has since been dragging the kingdom into the current century...
played in helping Egypt overcome the massive losses it suffered following the outbreak of the Ukraine war four months ago. As portfolio investors pulled money from Egypt, tourism income declined and the government faced rising commodity prices in knock-on effects at the start of the Ukraine war, Saudi Arabia deposited $5 billion in Egypt’s Central Bank. The Saudi-based International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation (ITFC) has provided Egypt with finance for commodity imports and Egypt’s government has said cooperation with the Saudi sovereign wealth fund will result in $10 billion in investments.
Egypt has also strongly supported recent efforts by Saudi Arabia to bring an end to the ongoing war and suffering in Yemen, which is likely to be another important topic on the agenda of the upcoming US-Arab summit. President al-Sissi has expressed strong support to the UN-mediated truce in Yemen, which has led to the most peaceful period there since war broke out seven years ago. Egypt’s ties with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf nations, as well as Jordan and Iraq, constitute to a strategic partnership, given that these relations are the cornerstone of preserving regional security and stability. This partnership aims at achieving development and peace through a unified and effective vision.
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