Rubio predicts additional Arab countries will normalize ties with Israel by the end of the year

When asked about Saudi Arabia’s position on normalization with Israel following US President Donald Trump’s Middle East visit last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “I think there’s still a willingness to do it.”

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Speaking to the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared his belief that more Arab countries will normalize relations with Israel by the end of the year.

“I think we may have good news, certainly before the end of this year, of a number of more countries that are willing to join that alliance,” he said.

When asked about the position of Saudi Arabia on the issue of normalization following US President Donald Trump’s Middle East visit last week, Rubio said, “I think there’s still a willingness to do it.”

“Certain conditions are impediments, October 7 being one of them, but the Saudis have continued to express an interest, as have the Israelis, in reaching that agreement,” he said.

During the Biden Administration, normalization talks were underway and seemed imminent, but were disrupted by Hamas’s invasion of Israel on October 7 2023, which led to Israel’s retaliation and the ongoing Gaza war.

A Hamas document recovered by the IDF showed that slaim Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was planning the October 7 invasion as an “extraordinary act” that would cause Israel to retaliate and derail normalization talks with Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia was expected to be the next Arab country to join the Abraham Accords, established at the end of Trump’s first term as an agreement among the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco to normalize ties with Israel.

Since then, Saudi Arabia has set Israel’s ending the war in Gaza and making tangible steps towards a Palestinian State as preconditions to any normalization agreement.

Although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken in support of Saudi normalization, he insists that the war in Gaza will only end with the destruction of Hamas as a political and military power and has rejected the establishment of a Palestinian State.