“We take issue with the Israeli government because they’re denying Palestinians their inalienable rights.”
Djibouti will not establish official ties with Israel without progress towards peace with the Palestinians, the African Muslim state’s President Ismail Omar Guelleh said.
In an interview with French publication The Africa Report this week, Guelleh said that “the conditions aren’t ripe.”
“We take issue with the Israeli government because they’re denying Palestinians their inalienable rights,” he said. “All we ask that the government do is make one gesture of peace, and we will make 10 in return. But I’m afraid they’ll never do that.”
Guelleh added that his country does not have an issue with Jews or Israeli people more broadly.
The president pointed out that Israelis come to his country to do business, and citizens of Djibouti have been permitted to travel to Israel for the past 25 years.
Djibouti is one of several African countries that had been named as likely to normalize relations with Israel following the Abraham Accords.
One country with which progress has been made is Niger, according to a senior Israeli diplomatic source with knowledge of the efforts to have more countries establish diplomatic ties with Israel.
Though there has been talk of Pakistan joining the ranks recently, any recent contact with Israel has been done through a third party, and the source said he did not see it as serious.
The Pakistani Foreign Ministry rejected talk of recognizing Israel as “baseless speculation” in a statement released Tuesday evening.
“The prime minister has made it clear that unless a just settlement of the Palestine issue, satisfactory to the Palestinian people, is found, Pakistan cannot recognize Israel,” a spokesman stated.
The comments came over a week after Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan said he faced pressure from unnamed countries to establish relations with Israel, but he would not consider it.
Pakistani passports say in them: “This passport is valid for all countries of the world except Israel.”
