Al-Naqab preliminary Summit in Abu Dhabi sought to consolidate a reactionary axis in the West Asia amid Jordan’s boycott

washington is not interested in a complete pullout from the Middle East despite its catastrophic failures in Iraq and Afghanistan; rather, it wants to preserve a small but strategic presence to assure the security of energy corridors. The Al-Naqab Forum is one potential meeting ground for the United States and its regional lackeys to collaborate on a wider scale. On the other hand, political analysts argue that the Al-Naqab Forum was established with the express goal of expanding relations between Israel and its Arab allies in the region.

The preliminary meeting of the Al-Naqab Summit took place in March last year. The second round is scheduled to take place in Morocco this spring. The summit’s preparatory committees recently met in Abu Dhabi to make the necessary arrangements. Officials from the United States, the Zionist regime, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Egypt cooperated in six working groups: clean energy, education and religious coexistence, food and water security, health, regional security, and tourism.

According to Zionist media, a delegation of over twenty Israeli officials, led by Alon Ushpiz, Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, travelled to Abu Dhabi. It is evident that the Arab countries’ phoney condemnation of the Ben-Gvir intrusion into Al-Aqsa Mosque last week had no effect on the Al-Naqab Forum’s proceedings. Interestingly, Jordan is the only Arab nation with diplomatic ties to Israel that did not send a delegation despite being invited to Abu Dhabi.

The victory of the extreme right parties in Israel and the expansionist policies of rising Zionist leaders like Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, the Zionist regime’s finance minister, are among the reasons why Jordan and the Palestinian Authority did not attend the Al-Naqab Summit in Abu Dhabi. Jordan advocates the so-called “two-state solution,” whereas Netanyahu, the new Israeli premier, is a staunch opponent of the establishment of an independent Palestinian state over the 1967 territories.

Meanwhile, Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem issued the following statement in response to criticism of the Al-Naqab Forum: “The continuation of the preparatory meetings of the Al-Naqab Summit, the last of which was held in the UAE with the presence of Zionist envoys, is an insistence on the wrongness of normalising relations with the occupiers.” Mr. Hazem further added, “These normalisation meetings are held in the shadow of the fascist Israeli occupying regime, which encourages it to escalate its aggression against the Palestinian nation, their sacred sites, and their captives.”