Saudi Crown Prince invited to visit Israel

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman has been invited to visit Israel, Haaretz reported on Wednesday. The invitation was made by Israel’s Minister of Intelligence, Yisrael Katz in an interview with Saudi online news site Elaph.

According to Katz, Saudi Arabia is the leader of the Arab world. He suggested that the Saudis could broker the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel, he added, “would be happy to take part” in such peace talks.

Last month, Elaph published an interview with Israeli Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot. That was the first time that a Saudi media outlet had spoken with an Israeli official.

During the interview, Eizenkot said that Iran is the “biggest real threat to the region.” He also revealed that Israel and Saudi Arabia are in “permanent agreement” regarding Iran’s plans.

Read: How long before the Israeli flag flies over Riyadh?

In October, an Israeli official let slip to AFP that Bin Salman had secretly visited Israel during September. In the middle of last month, Foreign Policy Journal published an article which described Bin Salman as Israel’s man in Saudi Arabia who could be the tool to carry out American plans in the region.

Ever since Israel’s creation on Palestinian land, Saudi Arabia has refused to recognise it. Recently, though, the government and others in Riyadh have started to call for full normalisation of relations with the Zionist state. They pre-empted Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital with a twitter campaign, saying that Riyadh is better than Jerusalem for them.