WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested Wednesday that more Arab nations could forge ties with Israel this year, as Washington presses hard for relations to normalize with Saudi Arabia.
President Donald Trump near the end of his first term led the so-called Abraham Accords in which the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco became the first Arab countries in decades to normalize with Israel.
“I think we may have good news, certainly before the end of this year, of a number of more countries that are willing to join that alliance,” Rubio told the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Saudi Arabia was in advanced talks on normalization, backed by then-president Joe Biden’s administration, before the unprecedented October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel, which responded with a massive military operation.
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Asked about the Saudi position a week after Trump visited Riyadh, Rubio said: “I think there’s still a willingness to do it.”
“Certain conditions are impediments, October 7 being one of them, but the Saudis have continued to express an interest, as have the Israelis, in reaching that agreement,” he said.
Saudi Arabia is considered the ultimate prize by Israel considering the kingdom’s role as the guardian of Islam’s two holiest shrines and its influence within the Arab and Islamic world.
But Saudi Arabia has made clear that it cannot normalize with Israel until an end to the Gaza war and without movement toward a two-state solution with the Palestinians.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while enthusiastic about Saudi normalization, has moved ahead with another major offensive in Gaza, where virtually the whole population has already been displaced.
Netanyahu, who leads the most right-wing government in Israeli history, is a longtime critic of the creation of a Palestinian state.
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