Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas holds a placard showing maps of (from left to right) historical Palestine, the 1947 United Nations partition plan on Palestine, the 1948-67 borders between the Palestinian territories and Israel, and a current map of the Palestinian territories without Israeli-annexed areas and settlements, as he attends an Arab League emergency meeting discussing the US-brokered proposal for a settlement of the Middle East conflict at the league's headquarters in the Egyptian capital Cairo on Saturday. Photo: AFP

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and four top Arab diplomats arrived Sunday in southern Israel for marking a thawing of relations between the Jewish state and several regional neighbors.

The gathering with officials from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco, which in 2020 normalised ties with the Jewish state -- and Egypt comes amid rising regional concerns over a deal Washington could soon reach with Iran to restore a 2015 nuclear agreement.

With the day of talks scheduled for Monday in the Sde Boker kibbutz, deep in Israel's Negev desert, Israel aims to mark the success of the US-propelled "Abraham Accords" that saw the normalization deals.

The gathering's opening was marred by a shooting attack in northern Israel that left two police officers dead and was claimed by the Islamic State group, a rare claim of an attack inside Israel.

"All the foreign ministers condemned the attack, sent their condolences to the families of the victims and wished a speedy recovery to the wounded," Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said on Twitter.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has also tested positive for COVID-19, his office said Monday, after he met US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The meeting takes place as the United States and European allies express quiet frustration that Middle East countries generally have not shown strong support for efforts to support Ukraine.

Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas rebuffed any pressure to criticize Russia, instead castigating the West for "double standards" that he said penalized Moscow while ignoring Israel's "crimes" against the Palestinians.

"The current events in Europe have shown blatant double standards," he told Blinken on Sunday.

The Iran nuclear deal was high on the agenda in meetings Blinken held Sunday with Lapid, Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

Speaking alongside Lapid, Blinken said the US believes restoring the agreement is "the best way to put Iran's [nuclear] program back in the box that it was in but has escaped" after the US withdrew from the deal under former president Donald Trump in 2018. 

The European Union's foreign policy chief said at the weekend that a deal with Iran to restore the nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, could be reached "in a matter of days."

Blinken stressed that "when it comes to the most important element, we see eye-to-eye" with Israel. 

"We are both committed, both determined, that Iran will never acquire a nuclear weapon."

Lapid said that the two sides "have disagreements" about the deal, whose restoration is in the final stages of negotiation in Vienna after nearly a year of talks. 

AFP