Israel Wants To Establish Relations With Indonesia And Saudi Arabia, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid: It Takes Time

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid. (Wikimedia Commons/Yaniv Morozovsky)

JAKARTA - Israel's top diplomat said on Tuesday it hoped to build on a US-brokered 2020 deal with four Muslim countries, establishing diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, but such a deal would take time.

Saudi Arabia, home to Islam's two holiest sites, and Indonesia, which has the world's largest Muslim population, have conditioned any eventual normalization with Israel, in tackling the Palestinian quest for statehood in territory captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

On Army Radio, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said Israel was looking to "extend the Abrahamic Agreement to additional countries" beyond the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.

"If you ask me what important countries we are looking at, Indonesia is one of them, Saudi Arabia of course, but these things take time," he said.

Lapid added that "small countries" he did not identify could normalize relations with Israel in the next two years.

Meanwhile, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said on Tuesday he would visit the United Arab Emirates, the first country to normalize relations with Israel as part of the Abrahamic Deal, on Jan. 30-31, and meet with its leaders.

Despite no official ties, Saudi Arabia agreed in 2020 to allow Israeli-UAE flights across its territory. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's El Al Israel Airlines plane was flying through Saudi airspace when he visited Abu Dhabi last month.

A secret visit to Saudi Arabia in November 2020 by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was confirmed by Israeli officials, but publicly rejected by Riyadh. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia share concerns over their common enemy, Iran.

To note, both Saudi Arabia and Indonesia condemned Israeli airstrikes in Gaza during 11 days of hostilities with Palestinian militants in May 2021. More than 250 Palestinians were killed in Gaza. Meanwhile, rockets fired by Hamas and other militant groups killed 13 people in Israel.