US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will host a virtual meeting on Friday with representatives from several Arab states and Israel to commemorate the one-year anniversary of former President Donald Trump's "Abraham Accords".
The development, reported first by the Axios news website, is the Biden's administration's "most active and public show of support by the Biden administration for the agreements" since it assumed office in January.
Trump struck normalization deals between Israel and several Arab states, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Morocco, in exchange for acquiescing to diplomatic and military requests from the Arab states. No mention was made of a representative from Sudan, which also agreed to normalize ties with Israel, but whose deal is still being finalized.
The Biden administration had balked at requests from the countries to commemorate the deals, which were struck in successive order beginning with the UAE in August 2020, but agreed to hold a virtual event "in recent days," Axios reported.
"The event will commemorate the one-year anniversary of the signing of the Abraham Accords and discuss ways to further deepen ties and build a more prosperous region," an anonymous State Department official told the news outlet.
