Israel posts 'fake image' of Jewish greeting from Mecca

The ministry's Arabic-language Twitter account posted the image on Saturday, provoking anger from some users.

"We received this photo from a pilgrim to Mecca, it shows the greeting 'have a blessed sabbath' (shabbat shalom) addressed to the Jews or Israelis from the heart of Mecca," the official account said.

The Israeli military's spokesperson for Arab audiences, Avichay Adraee, also commented on the picture.

"Judaism inside Mecca. Mutual coexistence and respect is so beautiful," he said.

But one Twitter user was quick to expose the picture as a fake, showing that the text has been doctored and the original image was taken two years ago.

The post comes as ties between Israel and some Gulf states, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are warming.

Last week, Gulf island state Bahrain hosted a US-organised conference on the Trump administaration's Palestinian-Israeli peace plan.

In an unprecedented interview of a senior Gulf official by an Israeli journalist, Bahrain's foreign minister said on the sidelines of the two-day event in Manama that Israel is part of the region's heritage.

In recent years Israel has been courting Arab nations which do not recognise the Jewish state, and in October Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu held surprise talks in Muscat with the ruler of Oman.

These efforts at rapprochement came as Iran - the arch-foe of Israel and regional rival Saudi Arabia - was bolstering its influence in several Arab countries.

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