Event of the Week (Friday, 8 August 2025): Meeting between the “Crown Prince” and the Zionist Ambassador… The Exposure of the Falsehood of the Ambassador’s Withdrawal
The public in Bahrain was surprised by a meeting between the “Crown Prince” and Prime Minister, Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, and the Zionist ambassador Eitan Na’eh in the capital, Manama, on 4 August 2025. This was the first public appearance of its kind since the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation in October 2023, after earlier reports had circulated about the ambassador being withdrawn to Tel Aviv amid escalating protests in Bahrain and around the world against the Zionist genocide.
Notably, the meeting was for the purpose of bidding farewell to the ambassador at the end of his term in Bahrain. The meeting, which took place at the Government House in Qudaibiya, received attention from official media: the state news agency covered the story, and state television broadcast images and footage of the meeting during the evening news. Salman displayed clear cordiality towards his Zionist guest, at a time when genocide and starvation crimes in Gaza are intensifying. In attendance on the official side were the Khalifi Minister of Finance, as well as a team from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who had served in the Al Khalifa embassy in Tel Aviv — which, since the departure of Khalid Al-Jalahma and his appointment to a new post at the Foreign Ministry, has not yet had a newly announced ambassador.
The Zionist ambassador Eitan had been appointed in September 2021 after the signing of normalization agreements with the entity, and had held numerous meetings with Khalifi officials. With the escalation of popular protests in Bahrain — which reached the very vicinity of the Zionist embassy in Manama — the ambassador disappeared from the public scene, particularly amid unanimous popular demands for his expulsion and the closure of the embassy. However, the recent meeting with Salman revealed the Al Khalifas’ manipulation through the staged “withdrawal” of the ambassador, intended to give the impression that they were exerting pressure on the entity to stop its crimes in Gaza.
In November 2023, the pro-regime Bahraini parliament had called for the ambassador’s withdrawal, followed immediately by an official government statement claiming that both ambassadors in Manama and Tel Aviv had left, without specifying any date or reasons. However, the “Israeli” Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied this, affirming that relations with the Al Khalifas remained stable.
