Israel and Bahrain cemented a deal officially establishing relations and signed seven memorandums of understanding on Sunday, further opening up the wealthy Gulf region to the Jewish state.
The documentation was signed at a ceremony in the presence of other international dignitaries and reporters, an AFP correspondent said, fleshing out a US-brokered deal the two nations had agreed to at the White House on September 15.
The Israeli delegation, led by National Security Council chief Meir Ben Shabbat, had travelled to Manama from Tel Aviv on the first direct flight between the two countries.
US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and President Donald Trump's special assistant for international negotiations, Avi Berkowitz, had travelled to Tel Aviv before joining the Israeli delegation's flight to Manama.
But Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, as well as the crown prince and prime minister, were absent from the ceremony, the AFP correspondent said.
On Sunday, the two nations' officials agreed to establish peaceful diplomatic relations and cooperate in the fields of the economy, civil aviation, finance, communications and agriculture, Israel's foreign ministry said in a statement.
It also said it would cooperate with Bahrain's foreign ministry and noted that the two nations had agreed Sunday on the exemption of visa requirements for diplomats.
Bahrain's foreign minister, Abdullatif al-Zayani, said that the decision to normalize ties comes from the "belief in the values of tolerance... in a region whose people have suffered from wars and conflicts."
The two sides will be free to open embassies in each other's countries after the ceremony, Berkowitz said, adding that an Israeli embassy in Manama could open within months.
The flurry of diplomacy between some of Washington's key regional allies has handed Trump a key foreign policy win as he campaigns for re-election ahead of polls in November.
'Great day'
Upon arrival in Manama, Israel's Shabbat said in Arabic it was a "great day," adding these relations will "most likely benefit both sides."
The Jewish state's normalization of ties with the UAE and Bahrain has however outraged the Palestinians, who have called the deals "a stab in the back" and urged Arab states to maintain unity against Israel.
Zayani, however, on Sunday stressed that Bahrain calls for direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians to end the conflict based on a two-state solution.
Like Israel, both Manama and Abu Dhabi have vehemently anti-Iran foreign policies and Tehran has slammed the normalization.
The Gulf monarchies have broken decades of Arab consensus that there would be no relations with the Jewish state until it had made peace with the Palestinians.
Bahrain, unlike the UAE, has a history of open politics and civil society movements, although rights have been curtailed in the past decade.
In a rare display of dissent in the small oil-rich kingdom last month, dozens took to the streets in Abu-Saiba, a Shiite village near Manama, to protest the normalization.
In the wake of the Arab Spring protests in 2011, the Sunni monarchy accused thousands of dissidents from the Shia majority of receiving orders from Iran.
