Saudi Arabia Says Interested in Israel Normalization Deal Despite Gaza War

Date: 10 January 2024 - 21:44

News ID: ۱۲۳۵۱۳

RIYADH (Dispatches) – Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the UK has stated that the country is still interested in normalizing relations with the Zionist regime after the war in Gaza.
A deal between the Zionist regime and Saudi Arabia was close before 7 October, Prince Khalid bin Bandar told the BBC.
Despite the “deplorable” casualty figures in Gaza, the kingdom was still interested in establishing ties with Israel, said Bandar, however this would not “come at the cost of the Palestinian people”, he added.
Speaking about the occupying regime, Bandar said: “The problem that we have today with the current regime in Israel is there is an extreme, absolutist perspective which does not work to achieve compromise and therefore you are never going to end the conflict.”
Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman told Fox News in an interview aired late September that they “get closer” every day to normalization with Tel Aviv. Zionist premiere Benjamin Netanyahu said during his UN speech last month that the regime was at the cusp of a historic normalization deal with Saudi Arabia.
However, the Zionist regime’s genocide in the Gaza Strip has reportedly blocked further talks.
Washington’s efforts for adding Saudi Arabia to the list of Arab countries that have signed the so-called Abraham Accords come at a critical time when U.S. President Joe Biden is seeking re-election and the U.S. government has been left embarrassed by the kingdom’s bolstering of ties with Iran and Syria, and its further gravitation toward China.
The UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco signed U.S.-brokered normalization agreements with the Zionist regime in 2020, drawing condemnations from Palestinians who slammed the deals as “a stab in the back of the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people”.