Netanyahu to announce further normalization agreements with Arab and Islamic countries soon

9:24 p.m.


Thursday, December 24, 2020

Tel Aviv – (DPA):

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that additional normalization agreements between Israel and Arab and Islamic countries would be announced sooner than expected, while Indonesia or Oman could normalize relations with Israel.

“We will see many, many countries, more than expected, and maybe much faster than expected,” he said, according to the Israeli newspaper “Jerusalem Post” on its website.

“You can see the Arab countries, some of them have already made progress, and some are making progress (to establish relations with Israel),” Netanyahu told US Ambassador to the United Nations in New York Kelly Craft and Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, when he met them in Jerusalem.

Kraft is visiting Israel this week, before stepping down from his post at the United Nations, when the Trump administration’s term ends on January 20. She also said there would be “more” deals to come.

According to the newspaper, Israeli intelligence minister Eli Cohen raised the possibility of concluding agreements with Indonesia, Oman, Mauritania, Niger and Saudi Arabia, and raised the possibility of an Asian country whose he did not mention the name, with the exception of Indonesia, which some have assumed to be Pakistan.

A diplomatic source told The Jerusalem Post that Indonesia and the Sultanate of Oman are the two countries most likely to establish relations with Israel, noting that normalization work with these two countries is at a later stage than other countries.

On Tuesday, Morocco signed an agreement with Israel on establishing full relations, to become the fourth Arab country after the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan to take that milestone this year.