White House Discussing Israel Normalization With Saudis
The administration of US President Joe Biden is discussing with Saudi Arabia the possibility of normalizing relations with Israel by joining the Abraham Accords, Israeli news site Walla! reports.Indian PM Modi invites Bennett for first official visit
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan raised the issue last month in Riyadh during a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), according to three US and Arab sources involved in the talks.
The sources said that during the conversation, MBS did not immediately reject the proposal to establish diplomatic ties with Israel, listing the steps needed to make the move, including improving relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia.
On Thursday, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud was in Washington for a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The possibility of Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords was not mentioned in the public statements of either side.
The Biden administration has taken a more critical stance toward the kingdom compared to his predecessor Donald Trump, focusing on human rights and raising the issue of the assassination of Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
The report states that any deal would need to be part of a larger package that would include Israeli measures regarding the Palestinians and a thawing of relations between Washington and Riyadh.
The Abraham Accords originally included the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, with the later additions of Sudan and Morocco.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met with Indian Minister of External Affairs Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, currently in Israel on an official visit, at his Jerusalem office on Wednesday. During the meeting, Jaishankar – speaking on behalf of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi – issued a first state invitation for Bennett to visit India.Here's why Comoros might be looking to normalize ties with Israel
Bennett and Jaishankar discussed ways of strengthening the strategic alliance between India and Israel, expanding bilateral ties, and deepening the friendship between the two countries.
Bennett thanked Jaishankar and Modi for their commitment to the partnership between India and Israel and said, "In the name of Israel, I want to tell you: we love India. We see India as a great friend and expect to expand our relations in every sector."
Earlier Wednesday, Jaishankar met with President Isaac Herzog, who welcomed the closer ties between Israel and India in a number of fields and thanked Jaishankar for his personal commitment and that of Modi's to promoting ties with Israel.
The meeting ended with a discussion of global strategic issues.
On Monday, Israeli and Indian government representatives said that the two nations had agreed to resume talks on a free trade agreement starting in November, with hopes of inking it by mid-2022.
Israel Population Surprise: FDR Said It Couldn’t Be Done
“You know there is not room in Palestine for many more people,” US President Franklin D. Roosevelt told prominent American Jewish leaders in early 1938. “Perhaps another hundred or hundred and fifty thousand.” At the time, there were about 400,000 Jews in the Holy Land. Today, according to recently-released statistics, there are nearly seven million.
The annual population tally, issued in September by the Israeli government’s Central Bureau of Statistics, found that Israel has 9,391,000 residents, of whom 6.9 million (74%) are Jews. The population has increased 146,000, or 1.6%, since the previous Rosh Hashanah.
There are an estimated 15.2 million Jews in the world, of whom more than 45% live in Israel. That’s quite a contrast with what the conventional wisdom expected in the 1930s.
The argument then that there was no more room for Jews in Palestine was the primary excuse that the British government used to restrict Jewish immigration and land purchases during the Mandate years. London insisted that the country had no more “absorptive capacity.”
President Roosevelt’s chief adviser on population settlement issues, Isaiah Bowman, agreed. Bowman, who as president of Johns Hopkins University imposed a quota on the admission of Jewish students, claimed there were no countries anywhere, including Palestine, that could absorb “a large foreign immigrant group.” He advised FDR that it would be best to “keep the European elements within the framework of the Old World.”
Of course, there were other voices at the time, even within the Roosevelt administration. Agriculture Department official Walter Clay Lowdermilk insisted that with proper cultivation, Palestine could absorb at least several million immigrants.