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Benjamin Netanyahu made an unannounced trip to Saudi Arabia to meet with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, and the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, according to media reports in Israel.
Sunday night’s trip, if confirmed, would mark an extremely rare high-level meeting between long-time enemies, one that Israel has been pushing in its efforts for regional acceptance. Reports in Hebrew, citing unidentified Israeli officials, said Netanyahu was accompanied by Yossi Cohen, the head of the country’s Mossad spy agency.
Saudi state media did not refer to a trip and the Israeli prime minister’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
However, the flight tracking data He showed A private jet previously used by Netanyahu took off from Tel Aviv to the Red Sea city of Neom in Saudi Arabia, where Prince Mohammed and Pompeo I had a meeting scheduled, Sunday night. The aircraft remained in the city for a few hours before returning to Israel.
Separately, one of the prime minister’s social media aides, Topaz Luk, appeared to hint at the Saudi meeting of tweeting that Netanyahu was “making peace” while his former internal rival, Benny Gantz, was “doing politics.”
Gantz had appointed a committee on Sunday to investigate the controversial £ 1.5 billion purchase of German submarines. Several associates of the prime minister, including his cousin, have been named suspects in an ongoing investigation, known as Case 3,000, although Netanyahu is not a suspect and denies wrongdoing.
The committee could investigate allegations that Netanyahu misbehaved and had conflicts of interest. Israel’s oldest leader is already fighting three other corruption cases in the courts, on charges he denies.
Gantz left the opposition this year to become defense minister in a Netanyahu-led coalition, but his association has been plagued by infighting. Despite their differences, Gantz has supported Netanyahu’s Washington-negotiated “peace” accords with two other Gulf states, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
While a similar deal with regional power Saudi Arabia remains out of reach, Sunday’s trip itself would mark a serious diplomatic victory for Israel. While the country shares a common enemy in Iran with Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, the continued occupation by the Palestinians has left Israel isolated in the Middle East.
The Trump administration, close to Netanyahu, has made efforts in recent weeks to push forward the hard-line Israeli government, with both diplomatic and token gestures.
Earlier in his trip, Pompeo became the first senior American diplomat to officially visit an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, a clear nod to the nationalist settler movement that has seized land in the occupied Palestinian territories.
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