Reports say Netanyahu flew to Saudi Arabia for a clandestine meeting with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia and the US secretary of state.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secretly flew to Saudi Arabia on Sunday to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Israeli media said.
Sunday’s meeting, if confirmed, would mark the first known meeting between senior Israeli and Saudi officials, amid a push by the United States to convince Arab countries to normalize ties with Israel.
Israel’s Kan Public Radio and Army Radio said on Monday that Mossad chief Yossi Cohen also attended the meeting, which was reportedly held in Neom, on the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia.
Netanyahu’s office and the US embassy in Israel did not immediately comment. There have also been no comments from the Saudi government.
According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, aviation tracking data showed that a private plane had made a short trip from Tel Aviv to Neom, where MBS and Pompeo had a meeting scheduled on Sunday.
Flight tracking websites showed the plane was on the ground for about two hours before returning to Israel about half an hour after midnight.
The jet, according to Haaretz, is the same private plane that Netanyahu took several times for his visits to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Standardization
Pompeo has tried to persuade the Gulf power to follow its neighbors, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain, to establish formal relations with Israel, a rapprochement built largely on shared concerns about Iran.
Riyadh has so far refused to normalize ties with Israel, saying the goals of a Palestinian state must be addressed first. But the Saudis have allowed Israeli planes to fly over their territory to newly available destinations in the Gulf and Asia.
Over the weekend, Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said his country “has supported normalization with Israel for a long time, but that one very important thing must happen first: an agreement. of permanent and total peace between Israelis and Palestinians. “
During a meeting with Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister last month, Pompeo had urged the Saudis to consider normalizing relations with Israel.
“We hope that Saudi Arabia will also consider normalizing its relations and we want to thank them for the help they have received so far in the success of the Abraham Accords,” Pompeo said.
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