Netanyahu met Saudi crown prince, Pompeo in Saudi Arabia on Sunday, Israeli radio stations report
November 23, 2020
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secretly visited Saudi Arabia on Sunday and met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and visiting U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo there, Israel’s Kan public radio and Army Radio said on Monday.
Netanyahu’s office and the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem had no immediate comment.
Avi Scharf of Israel’s Haaretz newspaper published aviation tracking data showing that a business jet had made a brief trip from Tel Aviv to Neom, on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast, where Bin Salman and Pompeo had a scheduled meeting on Sunday.
Pompeo has tried to coax the Gulf powerhouse to follow its neighbours, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, in establishing formal relations with Israel – a rapprochement built largely on shared concerns about Iran.
Riyadh has so far declined to normalise ties with Israel, saying Palestinian statehood goals should be addressed first. But the Saudis have allowed Israeli airliners to overfly their territory to newly available Gulf destinations and to Asia.
(This story corrects to fix spelling of Saudi city in paragraph 3)
(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Jeffrey Heller)