US President Donald Trump has said that he expects an expansion of the Abraham Accords and expressed confidence that Saudi Arabia will join the list of Arab countries that have normalised diplomatic ties with Israel.
“I hope to see Saudi Arabia go in, and I hope to see others go in. I think when Saudi Arabia goes in, everybody goes in,” Trump said in an interview on Fox Business Network.
The US President, however, did not give further details, including a timeframe for the expansion of the Abraham Accords.
The Abraham Accords, which were established during Trump’s first administration, are widely considered his biggest international achievement during his first term as US President.
Under the Abraham Accords, which were signed in September 2020, the UAE and Bahrain became the first Arab countries to formally recognise Israel since 1994. Later, Morocco also agreed to normalise relations with Israel, taking the number of Arab countries that recognised the Jewish state to five, with Egypt and Jordan being the only ones to do it earlier. Though Sudan also announced that it would recognise the state of Israel, it has not been formalised yet.
The second Trump administration has been trying to expand the Abraham Accords to more Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Lebanon.
However, Israel’s war in Gaza and recent attack on countries including Syria, Lebanon and Qatar had threatened to derail the process.
After Trump managed to broker peace between Hamas and Israel and ended the two-year-long war in Gaza, there is renewed hope of Jerusalem having normal diplomatic relations with its Arab neighbours.
The coordination between Israel and Arab countries is crucial for maintaining the fragile ceasefire in Gaza and rebuilding of the Palestinian enclave that has been left in ruins by the two years of war.