[2][3][4] After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Mahmoud Abbas visited Baghdad, where he held talks with Jalal Talabani.

It led to Israel occupying Palestine, and to the division of Kurdistan", he refuted claims of Palestinians being Ba'athists, stating "all Arab governments were supporting us.

Yet, at the same time that our leader Yasser Arafat had a relation with Saddam Hussein, he also had one with Mullah Mustafa Barzani.

"[6] During the 2017 Kurdistan independence referendum, when Nouri al-Maliki claimed that an independent Kurdistan would be a "second Israel", Taysir Khalid, responded to al-Maliki, stating "whatever the choice and the results and repercussions of the referendum were, the comparison between Kurdistan and Israel is an unfair comparison and must be rejected from the first place for many reasons, perhaps the most important of which is that the Kurds in northern Iraq and in the region in general are not an invasive or foreign people, but they are an authentic and great people who lived in the land of their fathers and grandfathers and preserved their authentic identity, heritage, history and civilization, and had contributed to the defense of our region in the face of foreign ambitions and invasions, while Israel is completely different, it is a country formed in the context of a colonial process imposed on the region from outside by colonial countries, still messing in this region.

[9][10] In 2021, there was a conference in Erbil of over 300 Iraqis, including many Sunni Arab tribal leaders, who called for an Iraqi-Israeli peace deal.

"[14] In April 2012, the Iraqi Kurdistan national football team was invited to participate in the 2012 Palestine International Cup.