Iraqis could face the death penalty or life imprisonment for promoting normalization with Israel according to a bill being discussed in parliament, The New Arab reports.
The Iraqi Council of Representatives on Wednesday held the first reading of the draft law banning normalization of ties with the Jewish state.
According to the bill's text, all Iraqi officials are banned from establishing diplomatic relations with Israel or calling for normalization, including officials in the northern Kurdistan region.
In September, a conference advocating for Iraq to join the Abraham Accords was held in the Kurdistan region's capital of Erbil that was attended by more than 300 Kurds, Sunnis and Shias.
Israel in 2020 established diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain as part of the US-brokered Abraham Accords peace initiative, with the later additions of Morocco and Sudan.
The anti-Israel bill was introduced by the bloc led by Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr which won the most seats in parliamentary elections last October.
Al-Sadr called for his members to introduce the bill in a tweet on April 23.
