Normalization: Netanyahu secretly visited Saudi Arabia and met Muhammad bin Salman and Mike Pompeo, according to Israeli media

So far, no comment has been made in this regard from the Israeli prime minister’s office or the US embassy in Jerusalem.

Israeli newspaper Haaretz published air traffic tracking data indicating that a business jet flew from Tel Aviv to the Neom region in northwestern Saudi Arabia on the coast of Saudi Arabia. Red Sea, where Mohammed bin Salman and Pompeo were scheduled to meet on Sunday.

Pompeo is trying to persuade the Saudis to follow the path recently taken by the Arab countries, namely the Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan, and to establish official relations with Israel.

Saudi Arabia, in turn, allowed Israeli planes to cross its airspace to reach stations in the Gulf and Asia.

Israel entered into two normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and weeks later U.S. President Donald Trump announced Sudan’s approval of normalization with Israel, alongside the announcement of Sudan’s withdrawal from the American list of states supporting terrorism.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after the announcement that “the three normalization agreements with Arab countries ended Israel’s geographic isolation by offering shorter and cheaper flights.”

“We are changing the map of the Middle East,” Netanyahu added at a press conference, showing a whiteboard with charts of flight paths.

Netanyahu said at the time: “There will be more countries.”

After the signing of standardization agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, speculation has spread on social media that Saudi Arabia will soon catch up with the standardization train.

This followed the broadcast of episodes of an interview on Al Arabiya TV with former Saudi intelligence chief and longtime Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud, in which he sharply criticized the leaders Palestinians for criticizing recent Gulf states’ peace moves with Israel.

In the interview, which aired in three parts, Prince Bandar said: “This lower level of rhetoric is not what we expect from officials who seek international support for their cause.”

“It is totally unacceptable that they (the Palestinian leadership) are bypassing the leaders of the Gulf states with reprehensible speech,” he added.

The Palestinian leadership initially called the normalization of relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain “betrayal” and “a stab in the back”.