Report: Israel to back Saudi bid to host key confab, send delegate to campaign event

Israel will support Saudi Arabia’s campaign to host a large-scale international gathering and will send an official representative to an event promoting that campaign as part of overtures for normalization between the countries, a report said Sunday.

Riyadh is waging a major push to host the 2030 World Fair’s Expo, and on Monday was set to hold a reception in Paris launching that bid, in the presence of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is visiting France.

Israel has sent a message to the Gulf kingdom that it will support its campaign, and an unnamed Israeli delegate has been invited to Monday’s Paris event, the Kan public broadcaster reported Sunday.

Jerusalem is thus sending a message that it is interested in warming its ties with Saudi Arabia, the unsourced report said, as US President Joe Biden’s administration works to try to persuade the countries to make the necessary concessions for a normalization deal.

The Finance Ministry declined to comment.

The Expo host city will be decided in November.

Earlier this month, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan said that Riyadh normalizing ties with Israel would bring significant benefits to the region but that those benefits would be limited by the absence of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Bin Farhan’s acknowledgment that normalizing ties with Israel would offer “significant benefits” appeared to stand out from previous comments.

Also this month, Netanyahu said in an interview that an Israeli normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia would be “a quantum leap forward” and “would change history” if it could be achieved, while saying such a deal was one of his primary policy goals in his latest term in office.

Speaking to Sky News, the premier said he could not guarantee that a deal will happen as “it’s up to the Saudis” but that he “certainly hope[s] so.”

Saudi Arabia, Netanyahu said, “is the most influential Arab country, not only in the Arab world — I think also in the Muslim world. It would fashion I think the possibility of ending the Arab-Israeli conflict, and I think that would also help us solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”

However, The New York Times reported Saturday that despite ramping up efforts to reach an Israeli-Saudi normalization deal, Washington does not view that scenario as particularly likely.

The report cited several American officials who assessed the chances of a deal at less than 50 percent.

But “Biden has decided to go for it, and everyone in the administration now understands that the president wants this,” Martin Indyk, former US envoy to Israel, told the Times.

It noted that, as previously reported, Saudi Arabia has demanded that the US cooperate with the kingdom on uranium enrichment for civilian purposes. Other demands by Mohammed bin Salman are American guarantees to defend the country if it is attacked, and a removal of certain barriers on arms sales to the kingdom, according to two US officials cited by the paper.

The report said bin Salman understands he will need to give up the previous Saudi demand for a Palestinian state or significant peace negotiations prior to normalization and appears open to the matter, though he will likely want significant benefits for the Palestinians, which have not yet been named.

Saudi officials have long said publicly that they won’t normalize relations with Israel before the establishment of a Palestinian state on the pre-1967 lines, even though they’ve offered more flexibility behind closed doors.

The report noted that bin Salman’s main interest in normalizing with Israel would be the American concessions he could sell at home, where peace with the Jewish state would be broadly unpopular.

Jacob Magid contributed to this report.