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Iran: Normalisation with Israel ‘playing with fire’

June 22, 2020 at 1:14 pm

Angry Palestinian protesters set portraits of King Hamad al-Khalifa (L) of Bahrain, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum (C), the United Arab Emirates’ prime minister and ruler of Dubai, as well as Oman’s new royal ruler Haitham bin Tariq (R) during a protest against a US peace plan proposal in the centre of the Palestinian city of Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on 30 January 2020. [HAZEM BADER/AFP via Getty Images]

Iranian Parliament’s Speaker for International Affairs Hussein Amir Abdullahian on Saturday warned Saudi Arabia and Bahrain of normalising ties with Israel, saying: “Normalisation is playing with fire.”

Fars News Agency reported Abdullahian saying: “Normalising ties with the Zionist entity will never help Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, but will undermine their security.”

His remarks came during the funeral procession of the late Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader, Abdullah Shallah.

The Iranian official stressed: “Today, resistance reached the peak regarding its abilities and persistence. If the Zionists repeated the mistakes of the past, they will face a major defeat.”

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He added: “Abdullah Shallah turned the Palestinian issue to a national, Islamic and global issue. He was a model for everyone… There are many common denominators between [Qasim] Soleimani and Sahllah. Both were interested in the unity of the Islamic nation.”

Addressing the Arab leaders, he said: “My advice to some Arab leader who stood in the opposite direction for the Palestinian issue: normalisation does not help settling the ongoing chaos in the region.”

Sixty-two-year-old Shallah, who was in a medical coma for two years after suffering multiple heart and kidney complications, died in a Damascus hospital on 6 June.