TUNIS — The Tunisian Parliament asked the parliamentary Freedom, Rights, and Foreign Relations Committee to examine a bill criminalizing the normalization of relations with Israel on May 21. In a May 18 general session, most parliamentary blocs demanded such legislation in the wake of the Israel-Gaza fighting and the recent developments in the Palestinian territories.

Badr al-Din al-Qamoudi, head of the parliamentary Administrative Reform, Good Governance and Anti-Corruption Committee, told Al-Monitor that the Freedom, Rights, and Foreign Relations Committee is still discussing the bill with the various political parties. Once discussions are completed, the committee will refer the bill to parliament, he said. 

During his visit to Brussels on June 3 and 4 on the sidelines of the second European Union-Tunisia Association Council meeting, Tunisian President Kais Saied said that “regimes choose whatever they want,” when asked for Tunisia’s take on some Arab states’ establishment of official and diplomatic ties with Israel.

In an interview with Euronews in Brussels released on June 5, Saied said, “We deal with states, and regimes make their own choices. We never interfered. They are free, but we are free as well. We have lived free, and we want to die free.”