Washington, DC – United States President Donald Trump says that forging formal relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel would be a “dream”, but he wants the kingdom to do it on its “own time”.The White House on Tuesday made public a flurry of economic and defence pacts with Saudi Arabia involving hundreds of billions of dollars, but any mention of Israel was conspicuously absent from the announcements.
The so-called “normalisation” drive between Saudi Arabia and Israel dominated his predecessor, Joe Biden’s, approach to the region, but the current US president is shifting focus elsewhere, analysts say.
“The Trump administration has made it clear they are willing to move forward on key agreements with Saudi Arabia without the previous condition of Saudi-Israel normalisation,” said Anna Jacobs, a non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute, a think tank.
“This probably reflects growing frustration in the Trump administration with Israeli military action across the region, especially in Gaza.” Advertisement
‘Time is not right’
Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, fellow for the Middle East at the Baker Institute, also said that Trump has realised that with the ongoing war in Gaza and Israel’s refusal to negotiate the establishment of a Palestinian state, the “time is not right” for a Saudi Arabia-Israeli pact despite Biden’s emphasis on brokering a deal.
“I think the White House has finally acknowledged that a normalisation agreement at this time is not possible,” Coates Ulrichsen told Al Jazeera.
During his first term, Trump managed to broker the Abraham Accords between Israel and several Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates, which established formal relations with the US ally independently of the Palestinian i …
