The head of the Israeli secret service, the Mossad, David Barnea, is in the United States within the framework of steps aimed at finalizing an agreement on the normalization of relations between the Jewish state and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia . The Franco-Israeli channel i24 News, which reports the information, explains that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is particularly keen on restoring diplomatic relations with the Al-Saud regime in order, he hopes, to transcend the crisis. which threatens his mandate, hundreds of thousands of Israelis demonstrating every day for weeks to demand his departure.
According to Israeli analysts, it is especially in Israel that such an option arouses turmoil and skepticism because of one of the two conditions imposed by Mohamed Ben Salman for it to succeed. The strong man from Riyadh is indeed demanding that the Biden administration give the green light for the development of a nuclear program for the benefit of Saudi Arabia and put in place a US-Saudi security pact. But the Saudi assurances as to the strictly civilian use of such technology do not reassure the Israelis who fear that this petromonarchy will operate a 180 degree turn in the event of a change of regime and transform this technology into a weapon of deterrence. against Israel.
Israeli sources have also indicated that security cooperation already exists between the two countries, recalling that Benyamin Netanyahu already met Mohamed Ben Salman three years ago. In the secret discussions that are taking place between Israeli and Saudi negotiators under the aegis of the United States, it is Israel that is more likely to agree to compromises, underline informed observers, specifying that the Israeli Prime Minister, weakened , has every interest in adding Saudi Arabia to the list of Arab countries that have already signed the Abraham Accords, ie the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.
At the Mossad director’s meeting with senior CIA and White House officials, Bernea put forward proposals that allow smooth normalization, including a promise not to annex Al-Quds, as much as the secret negotiations intervene in a tense context in the occupied Palestinian territories where the regime of Tel Aviv multiplies the excesses and the aggressions against the Palestinian populations and the places of Muslim worship.Ben Salman probably intends to use this “acquis” to convince opponents of rapprochement with the Zionist entity as an asset: he will have been the one who will have allowed the return of the holy city to the Palestinians and, beyond that, to the Muslims. But this is less a material fact than an ambitious aim that is as egocentric as it is utopian.
If there is normalization, it will once again be announced by the United States. The only question that arises is when this will happen because everything suggests that the agreement is in its final touches.
