US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has arrived in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, to consult with Arab leaders on Gaza’s future once the Israel-Hamas war ends.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also addressed a potential normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel, hinting it was imminent.
Blinken said a US-Saudi security pact that would be offered if the latter normalizes ties with Israel was near “completion.”
“The work that Saudi Arabia and the United States have been doing together in terms of our own agreements, I think, is potentially very close to completion,” Blinken said in Riyadh.
The US and Saudi Arabia have done intensive work over the last month on the deal, he added.
When asked about the security pact negotiations, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan said that bilateral agreements between the kingdom and the US were “very very close.”
“Most of the work has already been done. We have the broad outlines of what we think needs to happen on the Palestinian front,” Faisal bin Farhan said in a panel at the World Economic Forum special meeting in Riyadh.
A normalization deal was reportedly in the works last year, but was frozen after Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel on October 7, which Israel says killed 1,200, mostly civilians, with some 250 taken hostage. Israel has in recent years normalized ties with other countries in the region, including the UAE and Bahrain.
Source: Dw
