Israel's top diplomat Yair Lapid marked his visit to Bahrain by opening an embassy in Manama, one year after a US-brokered normalisation of ties between the two countries. "We have officially opened the Israeli embassy in Bahrain," tweeted Lapid. "We agreed that by the end of the year, there will be the opening of the Bahraini embassy in Israel." (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/30/israel-foreign-minister-lapid-opens-embassy-bahrain-visit) On Thursday, Lapid touched down at Manama airport just over an hour before a Gulf Air flight took off in the opposite direction to Ben Gurion airport, marking the first commercial flight between the two countries. Landing in Manama on a plane daubed with an olive branch painting, Lapid met King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and Crown Prince and Prime Minister Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa. Former US President Donald Trump forged normalisation agreements called the "Abraham Accords" between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in September 2020. Additional agreements were reached to include Morocco in December and Sudan in January this year.

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