A senior official close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has confirmed that Saudi Arabia is considering buying natural gas from Israel, the Bloomberg news agency reported.
The two countries discussed the construction of a pipeline linking Saudi Arabia with the Israeli city of Eilat, the former Israeli Knesset member Ayoub Kara said.
Bloomberg said the energy project of this size would require official diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, likely to have political reactions in the region, where Israel is still very much hated in the Arab world because of its treatment of Palestinians who are under occupation in the West Bank and under siege in Gaza .
The agency noted the existence of a secret alliance between Israel and Saudi Arabia in their hostility to Iran, and said that the formalization of this alliance may be difficult to achieve.
She hinted that Kara was one of Netanyahu's closest advisers in relations with Arab countries and was among a number of Israeli ministers who appeared publicly in a Gulf state last year, citing "this is in the common interest."
Bloomberg commented that Israel would find a passionate partner in the emerging natural gas industry in Saudi Arabia, where the kingdom plans to invest more than $ 150 billion in gas over the next decade to meet the growing demand for cheap electricity.
While some Saudis argue that normalization of relations with Israel is normal in the language of interests, many others oppose the idea so strongly that a group of more than 2,000 citizens from different Gulf countries circulated a petition last year to "stop all normalization with the Zionist entity" Their names are full. Which Bloomberg considered a rare step in a region where freedom of expression is limited.