ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Iraqi government on Saturday issued a strongly worded statement saying it rejected “illegal meetings” in Erbil that discussed normalizing ties with Israel.
“Proposing the concept of normalization is constitutionally, legally, and politically rejected in the Iraqi state,” read the statement from Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi’s office.
The day before, a group of Sunnis and Shiites from across the country met in Erbil and called for Iraq to join the Abraham Accords, a US-led Middle East peace initiative that saw Bahrain, Morocco, the UAE, and Sudan forge ties with Israel.
The meeting in Erbil was put on by the New York-based Center for Peace Communications, which advocates for peace and reconciliation in the Middle East and North Africa.
Wisam al-Hardan, leader of the Sons of Iraq Awakening movement, wrote about the meeting in an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal. He said it gathered more than 300 people, including tribal leaders, intellectuals, and youth activists from the October protest movement, from Baghdad, Mosul, Anbar, Babel, Salahaddin, and Diyala.
“Now, in striving to rebuild our country, we commit ourselves to an awakening of peace,” Hardan wrote.
A major blight on Iraq’s history, he said, was the mass exodus of the country’s Jewish population. In 1941, the Farhud, a violent pogrom, marked the beginning of end of one of Iraq’s oldest communities. A decade after the anti-semitic violence of the Farhud, more than 120,000 Jews were airlifted out of Iraq in Operation Ezra and Nehemiah. Today there are just four Jews living in Baghdad.
“In striving to rebuild Iraq, we must reconnect with the whole of our diaspora, including these Jews. We reject the hypocrisy in some quarters of Iraq that speaks kindly of Iraqi Jews while denigrating their Israeli citizenship and the Jewish state, which granted them asylum,” Hardan wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
He said the next step is to seek face-to-face talks with Israel.
Mithal al-Alusi, a former parliament member who has campaigned for years for the establishment of ties between Iraq and Israel, told Rudaw the conference was “calling for the establishment of balanced relations between Iraq and the Israeli state.”
al-Alusi said it is time for Iraq to make its own decisions, saying the country must “exert its sovereignty free from the hegemony of the militias and Iran.”
Some militia groups in Iraq, operating under the umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) but outside of the control of Baghdad, are backed by Iran, which calls Israel a “great evil.”
The statement from Kadhimi’s office said the meeting in Erbil does not represent the people of Iraq and Baghdad stands with the Palestinian people and their “right to an independent state with al-Quds al-Sharif [Jerusalem] as its capital.”
Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said Erbil "must forbid such terrorist Zionist meetings" and the Iraqi government should arrest everyone who attended the meeting. Otherwise, he threatened to take action himself, tweeting "we shall take responsibility for what must be done according to Sharia," referring to laws derived from Islamic teachings.
"The faithful must await our directive to start dealing with these filthy people," he added.
The Kurdistan Region and Israel do not have diplomatic relations, but have enjoyed friendly ties. Israel bought Kurdish oil and backed the 2017 independence referendum.
The Kurdistan Region's Ministry of Interior told Rudaw they were not aware of the meeting.
al-Alusi said those who participated in the meeting, which was organized by Iraqi Arabs, are under threat and their lives in danger.
Correction: This article originally stated Mithal al-Alusi attended the conference. This is incorrect. He did not attend, but spoke to Rudaw as someone who had campaigned on the issue.
Updated 11:19 am, September 26, 2021
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