Socialists are using 'hysteria over COVID as a weapon of economic destruction'
Bahrain is first Shiite-majority nation to establish ties with Israel
14 September 2020
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu departed for Washington just after midnight Sunday, to attend the Tuesday ceremony at the White House at which he will sign declarations of normalisation and peace with senior ministers from the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
“On our way to bring peace in exchange for peace,” he tweeted moments before the aircraft took off. ....
The announcement of an “historic US-Bahrain-Israel breakthrough to further peace in the Middle East,” after the United Arab Republic, underlined the strategic realignment of the Middle East underway under the Trump baton.
Israel and Gulf Arab nations were in mutual yet furtive support for years, but its formal breakthrough to open ties happened because the long pan-Arab boycott fuelled by hate and fear was ready to make way for normal relations when stimulated by the powerful mutual profit motive.
For the Gulf, this means embracing trade and tourism with a rich, high-tech economy and is coupled with the availability of long-denied advanced US weaponry.
The Arab rulers were willing to sideline the irksome Palestinian issue, which for decades blocked neighbourly ties, for the sake of girding up together to ward off the threat posed by a common enemy, Iran.
Trump was enabled to reinforce his sanctions regime against the Islamic Republic with another strong lever, growing regional isolation.
Bahrain’s case is different from that of the UAE and riskier.
President Trump noted that it took 26 years for the UAE and Israel to establish diplomatic ties; but only a month for the decision by Manama. This discrepancy reflects geography: the Emirates are 100km from Iran, while Bahrain’s islands are no distance at all,
The two cases were different in another way too. Whereas relations with Israel were welcomed not just by Emirati leaders but by their population, Bahrain’s Sunni hereditary king Hamad bin Isa bin Salman al-Khalifa, as ruler of a tiny population with a 70% Shiite Muslim majority, took a big chance.
Iran’s Lebanese agent, Hizballah, has planted and trained terrorist cells among his restive Shiite community. Toppling the Al Khalifa throne would serve Tehran’s claim to the island-kingdom as Iran’s “14th province.”
In 2011, next-door Saudi Arabia sent troops to help the king quell the “Arab Spring” Iran-backed Shiite uprising. Its success would have also impinged heavily on Saudi Arabia’s own Shiite minority in the Eastern Province opposite Bahrain.
The Al-Khalifa rulers depend on Riyadh not just as a shield, but for their economic health. The island-kingdom’s fast depleting Abu Safah oilfield is shared with the Saudi company Aramco.
King Hamad would therefore not have ventured to establish diplomatic relations with Israel without a nod from Riyadh, although the Saudi de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is constrained by domestic issues from formalising the kingdom’s working ties with Israel himself.
The strategic importance of the tiny island-kingdom, with the smallest economy among the six Gulf Cooperation Council members, is highly disproportionate to its size.
Wedged between its powerful Saudi ally and hostile Qatar and Iran, Bahrain’s archipelago of 100-islands – half of them artificial – plays host to key US bases: Naval Support Activity Bahrain, US Naval Forces Central Command and United States Fifth Fleet. It is the primary base in the region for America’s naval and marine activities.
Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani will therefore be an important presence at the White House ceremony on Tuesday for the signing of the Israel-UAE normalisation accord.
For its host, President Donald Trump, the occasion will boost his role as a Middle East peacemaker in his campaign for re-election in November. For Netanyahu, who will also be there, it is a sorely needed sugar coating for the pressing imposition of Israel of a second national lockdown against the surging coronavirus contagion, which his government has failed to contain.
On Saturday, the Bahrain FM and his Israeli counterpart Gaby Ashkenazi exchanged congratulation on the deal.
Iran threatened Bahrain with reprisals, while the Palestinian Authority furiously withdrew its envoy from Manama.
If you dare blink [twinkle] in the days ahead you may miss the most prophetic scenario unfolding right in front of your startled eyes?
Strict three-week lockdown in Israel from September 18 to October 9.....
September 14, 2020
Israel to enter 21 day lockdown starting on Feast of Trumpets.
The Israeli cabinet on Sunday approved a national lockdown starting on the eve of Rosh Hashanah and continuing until after Simhat Torah.
The state of covid-19 infection will then be evaluated before deciding whether to continue full closure. Schools, which were to have shut down two days earlier, will also close on Friday.
Malls, retail trade, restaurants and entertainment venues will be closed; movements confined to 500 metres outside the home; and synagogue worship restricted to 10 indoors, 20 in the open air. Private workplaces will operate full time under health guidelines.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced that lockdown was unavoidable after the red flag shown by the health authorities. New coronavirus cases had soared steeply in recent days, and the number of “red’ regions proliferated from 30 to 70 or 80, i.e. encompassing most of the country.
The prime minister held his televised news conference before boarding a flight to Washington to attend the ceremonial signing of a normalisation accord with the UAE hosted at the White House on Tuesday by President Donald Trump. He noted that two historic peace deals with Arab nations had been concluded in the space of a month.
Sunday morning saw another 2,650 new cases, totalling 153,217, of which 37,482 were active, 495 seriously ill and 136 on ventilators. Twenty people died overnight from covid-19 or background illnesses, altogether 1,103 since the first outbreak.
Just what can we expect this coming week by way of bible prophecy? That's hard to say, but when you look at the potential of what could happen with how everything is shaping up, it's more than a little exciting. Just imagine, in the same week, you will have Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain sign the Abraham Accord, the Feast of Trumpets on the Sabbath day and the beginning of a 3 x 7 day lockdown for the entire nation of Israel! If you can't get excited by all that, you need to spend more time in your Old Testament and Revelation. The table is surely set for something more than biscuits and gravy; Geoffrey Grider – Now the End Begins
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