Is Saudi Arabia Setting The Stage to Forge Ties With Israel?

• Is Saudi Arabia Setting The Stage to Forge Ties With Israel?
  by https://www.trtworld.com/
  Although the imam of Mecca faced heat on social media for invoking Islam to indirectly justify normalisation with Israel, experts think that Riyadh may not be fully prepared to take such a brazen step.
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  Saudi Arabia’s monarch King Salman had a phone call with the US president Donald Trump on Sunday, in which the former told the latter that Riyad was keen on having a fair and permanent solution to the Palestinian issue in accordance with the proposed Arab Peace Initiative.
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  The conversation between the two leaders came a month after the UAE and Israel announced to have normalised ties with the help of American assistance, making Abu Dhabi the third Arab state to have official ties with Tel Aviv.
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  Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is certain that more Arab nations will step up and announce that they have also followed the UAE’s footprints and come close to Israel.
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  The imam of Mecca’s Grand Mosque, Abdulrahman al-Sudais, faced a lot of heat on social media for “justifying” normalising relations with Israel. In a Friday sermon, he has reportedly urged Saudi residents and other worshippers to avoid “any misconceptions about correct beliefs in the heart coexisting with having healthy dealings in interpersonal exchanges and international relations”.
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  According to Tallha Abdulrazaq, an expert on the Middle East and award-winning academic, Saudi Arabia has reiterated very recently that it will not normalise until the Arab Peace Initiative started by the late King Abdullah is accepted by the Israelis. “This means normalisation in exchange for an actual Palestinian state along the 1967 boundaries,” he said. 
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