US plans new Israel-Arab summit, hopes for Netanyahu 'restraint'

The United States is planning a meeting early in 2023 between Israel and Arab nations it has normalised ties with, while it pushes the incoming right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu to show 'restraint', a US official said Tuesday.

Netanyahu is set to take office with the most right-wing government in Israel's history, with figures from the extreme fringes who staunchly back expanding settlements in Palestinian areas.

Israel has illegally occupied the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, since the Six-Day War of 1967. It has built dozens of illegal settlements on Palestinian land, populating the region with hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers.

A senior US official said the United States plans a meeting "probably in the first quarter" of 2023 of foreign ministers from the so-called Negev summit in March.

The first meeting, with Israel's former government, brought to the Israeli desert the foreign minister of Egypt, the first Arab state to make a peace treaty with Israel, and his counterparts from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco, which normalised relations in 2020 in the so-called Abraham accords.

The accords are "near and dear to the heart of Prime Minister Netanyahu and so I imagine that he wants to continue to see that move forward," the US official said on condition of anonymity.

"I think Israel has to factor that in," the official said.

"Depending on some of the things that Israel does, that may make it harder or easier for these countries to actually engage and participate and move forward, never mind bringing new countries into the process."

The United Arab Emirates jumpstarted the Abraham accords in return for a promise by Netanyahu's then government not to move ahead with annexation of the West Bank, a step that had the blessing of the Trump administration.

Prior to the most recent Israeli elections, the UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed warned Netanyahu about how the inclusion of extremists such as Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich in his new government could harm the Abraham Accords.

After the elections, however, the Emiratis invited Ben-Gvir to the UAE’s National Day reception in Tel Aviv.