Bahrain foreign minister sparks fury with surprise Peres tribute

Statement draws strong criticism on social media

Bahrain’s foreign minister paid tribute to Israel’s former president Shimon Peres yesterday, in a surprise statement that drew strong criticism on social media.

“Rest in Peace President Shimon Peres, a Man of War and a Man of the still elusive Peace in the Middle East,” Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmed Al Khalifa said on Twitter.

The response to his tweet was swift.

Bahrain has no diplomatic ties with Israel, and for many in the Arab world Peres was a deeply controversial figure, reviled for his role in Israel’s wars against Arab countries and for allowing settlement expansion to continue on occupied Palestinian land.

“The foreign minister is paying tribute and praying for the Zionist terrorist and the killer of children,” said former opposition legislator Jalal Fairooz.

Another critic, Khalil Buhazaa, tweeted: “Diplomacy does not mean rudeness.”

Peres, 93, died on Wednesday after suffering a stroke. He won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for his role in negotiating the Oslo Accords, which envisioned an independent Palestinian state.

But he is also remembered in the Arab world as the man who ordered the devastating Grapes of Wrath operation against Lebanon in 1996, which left 175 people dead, most of them civilians.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas plans to pay a rare visit to Jerusalem today to attend the funeral of Peres.

“Abbas plans to go,” a Pales- tinian official said yesterday. The western-backed Palestinian leader, who exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank, last visited Jerusalem in 2010, when he held talks with prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

It was not clear if the occasion would yield anything more than handshakes with Mr Netanyahu and US president Barack Obama, who will also attend.

Peres is reviled for his role in Israel’s wars against Arab countries