WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – When U.S. President Donald Trump lands in Riyadh on Tuesday, he will be greeted with opulent ceremonies, gilded palaces and the prospect of $1 trillion in investments. But, the raging war in Gaza has denied him one goal he has long craved: Saudi-Israel normalization.
Behind the scenes, U.S. officials are quietly pressing the Zionist regime to agree to an immediate ceasefire in Gaza - one of Saudi Arabia’s preconditions for any re-start of normalization talks, said two Persian Gulf sources close to official circles and a U.S. official.
Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff told an audience at the Zionist regime’s embassy in Washington this week that he imminently expected progress on expanding the so-called Abraham Accords, a set of deals brokered by Trump in his first term under which Arab states including the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco normalized with the occupying regime.
“We think we will have some or a lot of announcements very, very shortly, which we hope will yield progress by next year,” Witkoff said in a video of his speech. He is expected to accompany Trump on his visit to the Middle East.
However, opposition by Zionist prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a permanent stop to the war or to the creation of a Palestinian state make progress on similar talks with Riyadh unlikely, two of the sources said.
Saudi Arabia does not recognize the Zionist regime as legitimate. 
Establishing ties has become especially toxic for Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, since the start of the Zionist regime’s war in Gaza.
As such, the issue, central to bilateral talks in Trump’s first term, has effectively been delinked from economic and other security matters between Washington and the kingdom, according to six other sources Reuters spoke with for this story, including two Saudi and two U.S. officials. The people all asked to remain anonymous to speak about sensitive diplomatic conversations.
Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, needs the Gaza war to end and a credible path to a Palestinian state “before he re-engages with the issue of normalization,” said Dennis Ross, a former U.S. negotiator.
In the meantime, Washington and Riyadh will focus Trump’s trip largely on the economic partnership and other regional matters, according to the six sources. Lucrative investments such as major deals in arms, mega-projects and artificial intelligence are in play, officials from both sides stressed.