Biden’s push is getting both nations on board – all parties are optimistic

Jacob, Times of Israel, “Foreign minister says Israel ‘very optimistic’ on normalization deal with Saudis,” June 26, 2023, dmr

Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said Sunday there was a relatively short “window of opportunity” for a coveted, US-brokered normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia in the coming months, and that Jerusalem was optimistic about a potential deal that would be separate from the 2020 Abraham Accords. In a briefing with diplomatic reporters, Cohen said talks on such an agreement were ongoing through various channels, but mainly via Washington. “We are very optimistic about the possibility of achieving such an agreement. This is an achievable agreement, after which more countries will follow,” said Cohen without specifying. Israel signed normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco in 2020. The foreign minister said the Saudis “were also interested in such an agreement,” which he said “will not be part” of the Abraham Accords and would include other countries as well. According to Israeli assessments, he said, “there is a window of opportunity until March 2024” for an agreement with Riyadh, “after which the political system in the US will focus on the presidential elections” later that year. Talk of a potential Jerusalem-Riyadh deal has swirled over the past few months as the Biden administration has intensified its effort to broker an agreement. In early June, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken nudged the Saudis on diplomatic normalization with Israel on a visit to Jeddah and Riyadh. Days later, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan said that normalizing ties with Israel would bring significant benefits to the region but that those benefits would be limited by the absence of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.