Small protests held in Bahrain against opening of Israeli embassy

MANAMA. Bahrain — Anti-Israel protests broke out in Bahrain on Friday, a day after Foreign Minister Yair Lapid’s visit to open the Jewish state’s first embassy in the country.

Police fired tear gas during one rally as scattered, small-scale protests took place around the tiny Gulf state.

Protesters marched waving Palestinian and Bahraini flags, chanting “Death to Israel” and “No to Israeli embassy in Islamic Bahrain”. No arrests were reported.

Lapid’s visit on Thursday came a year after Bahrain normalized ties with Israel, breaking with decades of Arab consensus that there should be no relations without a resolution to the Palestinian question.

The United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Morocco also established relations in a series of US-brokered agreements known as the Abraham Accords.

During his landmark visit to Bahrain Thursday to inaugurate the new embassy there, Lapid conducted a tour of the headquarters of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet in the Arab kingdom.

Lapid was joined there by his Bahraini counterpart Abdullatif bin Rashid Al- Zayani, and was hosted by Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of the United States Naval Forces Central Command.

The Fifth Fleet has sometimes clashed with Iranian vessels in the Persian Gulf, and Lapid’s visit there was seen as a likely message to Tehran.