Nides: ‘Wouldn’t it be grand if we wake up’ to news of Saudi-Israeli normalization?

Speaking at start of the AJC Global Forum in Tel Aviv, US Ambassador Tom Nides offers rare praise for the Donald Trump administration, calling the Abraham Accords “one of the most significant foreign policy achievements in the Middle East for a long time.”

“Wouldn’t it be grand if we wake up someday and there’s a normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and the State of Israel,” he says, amid White House efforts to broker a pact between Riyadh and Jerusalem.

He reiterates US support for Israel against Gaza-based terrorist groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. “PIJ is so bad that even Hamas doesn’t want to hang around with them” he says. “No country anywhere in the world would tolerate” hundreds of rockets being fire at them, Nides continues, referring to rockets fired by PIJ in May.

Turning to the Palestinians, Nides stresses that “we cannot lose the vision of a two-state solution.”

The US ambassador, who is returning to the US next month following two years on the job, offers an optimistic read on the ongoing internal fight over the judicial overhaul.

“Israel is going through an unusual period in its history,” he says, adding that “democracy is alive and well in Israel and we should appreciate that.”