Bahrain's ambassador to the United States, Shaikh Abdullah bin Rashid Al Khalifa, spoke about the prospect of normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, saying the question should be about when it will be, not whether it will happen.
Attending an energy security summit Monday in Oklahoma, Al Khalifa told Bloomberg that a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel "may not be a question of if, but of when."
The agency quoted him as saying that the compass appeared to point towards peace.
This comes days after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said that the convergence in negotiations to reach an agreement between the kingdom and Israel is increasing day by day.
Speaking to Fox News, the Saudi crown prince said, "There is a quest by the administration of US President Joe Biden to reach a peace agreement between us and Israel, for us the Palestinian issue is very important, and we need to solve this part."
Earlier, Reuters reported that the White House strongly supports moves towards normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel, which was the focus of a meeting between US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
In the same context, Netanyahu said – in his speech during the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly last Friday – that he believes that Israel is on the cusp of a historic peace agreement with Saudi Arabia, saying that the Palestinians should not be given the right to veto new peace treaties with Arab countries.
Netanyahu added that the 2020 agreements to normalize relations with several Arab countries were a signal of "the dawn of a new era of peace," and added that "such a peace would go a long way towards ending the Arab-Israeli conflict and creating a new Middle East, and would encourage other Arab countries to normalize their relations with Israel."