According to his office, Israel’s tourism minister arrived in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for the first official visit by an Israeli cabinet member to the country to attend a UN tourism conference.
Minister Haim Katz arrived in Riyadh on a two-day visit as Saudi Arabia considers a potential US-mediated agreement to establish formal ties with Israel, whose sovereignty it has never formally acknowledged.
According to Reuters, the Saudi authorities did not immediately react to a request for comment.
On Tuesday, Saudi Arabia’s non-resident ambassador to the Palestinians made his first visit to their seat of government in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, presenting credentials that also designated him “consul-general in Jerusalem.”
Saudi Arabia has long insisted that recognition of Israel be conditional on Palestinian statehood, a demand that many members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s nationalist religious alliance have consistently rejected.
The ambassador, Nayef Al-Sudairi, told reporters in Ramallah that his visit “reaffirms that the Palestinian cause, Palestine, and the Palestinian people are of high and important status and that there will be a chance for greater cooperation between Saudi Arabia and the state of Palestine in the coming days.”
