The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas strongly condemned the UAE’s opening of the embassy in Israel.

"The United Arab Emirates’ inauguration of its embassy in the Israeli occupation reaffirms the awful sin of establishing ties with the Israeli occupation in defiance of the Arab people and enormous rejection of any form of normalization with the occupation," the movement said in a statement.

"This move is critically alarming, as it comes following a large-scale Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip during which dozens of massacres against unarmed civilians were perpetrated and hundreds of civilian buildings and installments were leveled to the ground," it added.

"Breaking with the Arab consensus against forging ties with the Israeli occupation, UAE goes ahead with this serious deterioration at the level of its foreign policy that will provide a cover for Israeli crimes and encourages the Israeli government to push for more colonization and Judaization schemes in Palestine. Not so long will normalization take to unveil its horrific outcomes on the Arab peoples’ security and sovereignty," it stressed.

"Finally, Hamas reiterates the necessity for normalizers to step back, rectify such incongruous track, and end all forms of normalization with the Israeli occupation, in line with Arabs’ national, moral, and religious responsibility towards the Palestinian cause," it concluded.