The West views diplomatic contacts between once belligerent countries as an important and necessary step towards peace, and accordingly has welcomed the recent diplomatic contacts between Israel and some Muslim and Arab states.
However, these events - notably meetings between Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and the foreign ministers of Indonesia, Pakistan and other Muslim countries - has incensed the Palestinian Authority, which vehemently opposes what it calls the "normalization" of relations with Israel.
Palestinian organizations and the controlled media in the Palestinian Authority have undertaken an ongoing campaign of thorough condemnation of these recent diplomatic contacts. The PA official daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, went so far at to visually depict the meetings with Israel as Arabs literally on top of a prostitute called 'Israel,' as in the picture above.