International Desk:
Syria and Lebanon can normalize relations with Israel before Saudi Arabia. This is what Israeli Ambassador to the United States Echiel Loiter thinks. He said this in an interview with the conservative American media outlet Prager-UK.
Israeli Ambassador Loiter believes that Syria and Lebanon can normalize relations with Israel before Saudi Arabia by joining the Abraham Accords. He said, “There is no reason now that we will not reach an agreement with Syria and Lebanon.” He added, “We have changed the paradigm there (in Syria-Lebanon). I am very optimistic about the possibility of an Abraham Accord with Syria and Lebanon. It could actually happen before Saudi Arabia.”
Loiter told Prager-UK CEO Marissa Street that Saudi Arabia is considering joining the Abraham Accords. Because the country was very close to this agreement in 2019. If President Trump had been in power in 2020, we would probably have reached that goal. He added that despite the complications in normalizing relations due to the Gaza war, Israel and Saudi Arabia are still on the path to normalizing relations.
Regarding the possibility of normalizing relations with Lebanon, the ambassador said, “Lebanon has an opportunity to emerge from a failed state and re-establish itself as a civil society.” Regarding Syria, he said, the United States should have hesitated more in lifting sanctions on the country. He noted that the United States should wait to see what Syria does. He stressed the importance of protecting minorities such as the Druze and Alawites in Syria.
He said, “We cannot allow jihadists to remain on our borders. We learned this from the events of October 7. We want al-Sharaa to move in a direction where we see him dismantling jihadist groups, banning organizations like Hamas-Hezbollah, and protecting minorities.”
