Saudi official makes rare Jerusalem visit, meets Israelis

While the visit was not an official one, given that Eshki isn’t a Saudi official, he could not have carried out such meetings without the blessing and the permission of the Saudi monarchy.

“The Saudis want to open up to Israel”, Frej said.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry says a senior official has met with a visiting former military general from Saudi Arabia.

The meeting of the Saudi delegation with opposition members in the Knesset was attended by member of the central committee in the Palestinian Fattah movement Jibril Rajoub.

Eshki’s meetings with Gold and Mordechai reportedly took place at the King David Hotel in the heart of Jerusalem, and not at official Israeli government facilities.

He also met with members of the Knesset to discuss the Arab Peace Initiative, a proposal for ending the Israel-Palestine conflict and Zionist Union MKs Ksenia Svetlova and Omer Bar-Lev as well as Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid on Tuesday. “This is a strategic step for them”. They want to continue what former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat started [the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty].

“To my knowledge, there is no cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia in counter-terrorism efforts, and though they share the same approach in seeking a solution, we want Israel to put an end to what has caused this terrorism”. “This is clearly evident”.

The first announced cooperation between the two countries came this year in April as the Israeli defence minister Moshe Ya’alon told Israeli media that, as part of the Egyptian-Saudi maritime demarcation deal which saw the transfer of sovereignty of two Red Sea islands to the Gulf kingdom, a quartet agreement that included the U.S. on the transfer needed to be reached beforehand.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry visited Israel earlier this month, where he met with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. He was also opposed to any Palestinian right of return.

This is not the first meeting between Gold and Eshki.

Eshki, who now heads a Saudi think tank in Jeddah, arrived in Ramallah last week and held talks with Palestinian Prime Minister Rami al-Hamdallah.

The plan promises Israel diplomatic relations with Arab states in exchange for a withdrawal to the pre-1967 line.

“Peace will not come from Arab countries, but the Palestinians and the implementation of the Arab peace plan”, Eshki said. The Palestinians have welcomed the French initiative while Israel has rejected it, saying it will only push the prospects of peace further away and instead has urged direct talks with the Palestinians.