Jared Kushner, senior adviser to the US President, said on Friday that the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia is inevitable, a day after Washington announced that the UAE and Israel had agreed to a full normalization of relations between them, while the American ambassador to Israel David Friedman expected that the normalization agreement would be signed between Abu Dhabi And Tel Aviv next month.
Commenting on the Emirati-Israeli agreement, Kushner said in a TV interview that he believed that other countries are very interested in moving forward with establishing diplomatic relations with Israel.
He added that he believes that the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia is inevitable, and that "the two countries will then be able to do many great things."
Reuters reported that a senior White House official said that Kushner and the US envoy to the Middle East Avi Berkowitz are in contact with many countries in the region, in an attempt to find out if there are other normalization agreements to be signed, and the US official did not reveal the names of the countries involved, but there are suspicions that focus On two countries, Bahrain and the Sultanate of Oman, which welcomed the normalization agreement between the UAE and Israel.
President Trump's strategic advisor, Jared Kushner, says peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia needs time.
- ZaidBenjamin (@ ZaidBenjamin5) August 14, 2020
To date, there has been no official response from Saudi Arabia, which sponsored the Arab Peace Initiative, launched in 2002, and which calls on Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian territories it occupied in 1967 in exchange for peace and full normalization of relations with Arab countries.
The Jewish mediator, for
his part, quoted the American Jewish billionaire Haim Saban on the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as saying that he feared the Qataris and Iranians would attack him if he established public relations with Israel.
Saban - who brokered the conclusion of the peace agreement between the UAE and Israel - revealed in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Aharonot that he met at a dinner of Mohammed bin Salman and asked him: Why is he keeping relations with Israel under the radar? Why doesn't he go out and drive things? The Saudi Crown Prince replied that he could implement this in an instant, but he was afraid that the Qataris and Iranians would attack him, and he feared chaos inside his country as well.
The French Press Agency quoted Omar Saif Ghobash, assistant to the Emirati Foreign Minister for Culture and Public Diplomacy, as saying that his country had not consulted with Saudi Arabia before announcing its agreement with Israel to normalize relations.
The Emirati official added, "We did not consult with anyone, nor did we inform anyone, and as a sovereign country, we do not feel that we are obligated to do so."
Signing the agreement
In a related context, the US ambassador to Israel said that the signing ceremony for the normalization agreement between Israel and the UAE will take place at the White House next September.
The Israeli Channel 12 reported that a high-ranking Israeli delegation will head next week to the UAE, as part of an agreement to normalize relations with it.
"Israel Today" newspaper said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the UAE at least twice in secret during the past two years, as part of the contacts that were underway to formulate an agreement to normalize relations between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi.
Arab and Islamic countries supported the Emirati-Israeli normalization, including Egypt, Bahrain and the Sultanate of Oman, while Iran and Turkey rejected it, and other countries preferred not to comment directly on the agreement, such as Jordan and Yemen.
On the other hand, the Palestinian National Authority described the UAE's normalization of its relations with the occupation state as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause, and the authority called an emergency meeting of the Arab League to condemn the agreement, and Palestine immediately summoned its ambassador to the UAE.
After Friday prayers in Jerusalem, worshipers trampled outside the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the pictures of the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and in the city of Nablus, demonstrators set fire to the pictures of Abu Dhabi Crown Prince, Netanyahu and Trump.