Peace with Saudi Arabia would be a “quantum leap” forward for Israel and could help end the Palestinian conflict, Benjamin Netanyahu has said.
Speaking at his office in Jerusalem, the prime minister said negotiating a normalisation agreement was one of the “great goals” he set himself when he returned to office in December of last year.
“I think it would fashion the possibility of ending the Arab Israeli conflict and I think that would also help us solve the Palestinian Israeli conflict, because the Palestinians are only two percent of the Arab world,” he told Sky News.
“The reason [Palestinian] leadership has been resistant to accepting the idea of a Jewish state is they said ‘well, we have all the Arab world, we’ll overcome Israel one day’.
“When they see the Arab world has made their peace with Israel they’ll be a turning in the Palestinian polity, but I think working outside in probably has a better chance of getting peace with the Palestinians than trying to bust through the Palestinians to the Arab world.”
US President Joe Biden is thought to be making a diplomatic push to secure an Israeli-Saudi peace deal within the year.
It would follow the Abraham Accords: a set of similar normalisation agreements struck between Israel and Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in 2020.
Asked if he thought a deal with Saudi Arabia was close, Netanyahu said it is currently “too early to tell”.
If agreed, he said, a treaty would “change the course of history”.
He added: “We have great opportunities to advance the peace in our region, peace between our two countries, the wellbeing of our peoples.”
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Benjamin Netanyahu (Photo: Flash 90)
Asked about Iran’s claim that it has developed a hypersonic ballistic missile that could strike Israel, Netanyahu said Israel was monitoring the Islamic Republic’s capabilities but could deal with “whatever they have”.
“Iran is openly committed to destroying, repeating the Holocaust and destroying the six or seven million Jews of Israel and we're not going to sit by, idly by, and let them do it,” he said.
Agreements made by countries with Iran to constrain their nuclear programme, he added, do not bind Israel.
He continued: “If they’re saying they're going to end Jewish history after 3,000 years, 3500 years of toiling under the sun, rebuilding our homeland, rebuilding our life here, and these ayatollahs think that they could threaten us with a nuclear Holocaust they're wrong.
“We will do whatever we need to do to defend ourselves."
Netanyahu also emphasised that attempts to reform Israel’s judiciary will still go ahead, despite an initial plan triggering protests that ground the nation to halt earlier this year.
“In Israel the judicial arm has arrogated to itself many of the powers of the executive and the legislature,” he said. “More than any other place on earth.”
Despite this, Netanyahu claimed, he intends to seek a compromise between the Jewish state’s warring factions.
He concluded: “I don’t want to bring it from one side of the pendulum to the other side, where we arrogate [power] from the judicial process to the executive or the legislature powers that we shouldn’t.
“We have to have a happy middle. It’s going to be very hard because it’s extremely difficult… I don’t know if I’ll succeed.”
