The president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) says the chief of staff of the Israeli military, Gadi Eisenkot, secretly traveled twice in November to the United Arab Emirates, where he met with senior officials, as a number of Arab countries in the Persian Gulf region are warming their relations with the Tel Aviv regime after clandestine contacts.

Qatar’s foreign minister has called the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) a “toothless” organization incapable of holding its members to account.