Israeli minister arrives in Saudi Arabia in first public visit

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."