World Bulletin / News Desk

Senior Israeli Arab leader Muhammad Zidan, who works as the head of an umbrella organization representing Arab civil society and municipal politicians known as the High Follow-up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, has accused Israel and the US of secretly creating the so-called 'Islamic State' (IS) group to sow discord in the Arab world.

Speaking at an Islamic Movement in Israel gathering in Nazareth on Friday, Mr. Zidan said that “the Israeli Shin Bet and the US are the ones who invented IS in order to create new divisions in the Arab world and the region which will serve them,” the Times of Israel reported.

“The question asked here is: Who provides IS with weapons? Who stands behind them financially? The answer is clear: The US supports IS in order to ease its takeover of the region,” he said.

Sheikh Raed Salah, the head of the Islamic Movement in Israel and a vocal critic of Israeli violations against Palestinian holy sites such as Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, also reportedly spoke against IS at the gathering, calling them “a danger to the Arab world,” but at the same time expressed his opposition to the US-lead coalition to fight the group.

US President Barack Obama announced his plans in a prime time address on Wednesday to build an alliance to root out ISIL in both Syria and Iraq, plunging the United States into two conflicts in which nearly every country in the Middle East has a stake.

An alliance against IS is bound to require cooperation from countries that consider each other enemies. Washington itself supports the Shi'ite-led government in Iraq but opposes Assad in Syria; it is allied to most Sunni Arab states while hostile to Iran.

Since early last month, the U.S. has carried out a total of 143 airstrikes across Iraq against sites said to be held by the IS, formally known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).