Biden’s bid to integrate Israel in Mideast ‘doomed to fail’: Hamas

By Mohammad Majid

GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) - The head of Palestinian resistance group Hamas said Thursday that efforts by US President Joe Biden to integrate Israel into the Middle East region are doomed to fail.

"Attempts by the US administration to re-design the region in order to integrate the occupying entity [Israel] in the region [...] are doomed to failure," Ismail Haniyeh said in a statement.

He said Israel’s integration “runs against the will of the peoples and contradicts the cultural and intellectual heritage of the region," he added.

Biden arrived in Israel on Wednesday as part of a regional tour that also includes the West Bank and Saudi Arabia.

In 2020, Israel signed US-sponsored agreements to normalize relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco, in a move decried by the Palestinians as a “stab in the back.”

Haniyeh called for launching a "strategic dialogue" between countries of the region “to build a political alliance to protect the region against normalization, dominance, and exploitation of resources.”

*Writing by Ahmed Asmar in Ankara