Netanyahu secretly meets with crown prince in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.RONEN ZVULUN / Reuters

The long tradition of diplomatic meetings in the shadow of the Middle East is today an open secret.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled in absolute stealth on Sunday night to Saudi Arabia to meet with Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salmán and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is on a tour of the Middle East.

The state radio, the Army station and the main Israeli media reported on the reserved diplomatic meeting on Monday, while the Prime Minister's Office maintained an ambiguous silence on the first known appointment with the de facto president of the desert kingdom.

Israel's Education Minister, former General Yoav Gallant, finally confirmed the meeting.

"The simple fact that the meeting has taken place and that its celebration is made public, albeit semi-officially, is a matter of great importance," he told Army radio.

Accompanied by the director of the Mosad (foreign intelligence service) and without warning either the Defense Minister, Benny Gantz, or the Foreign Minister, Gabi Ashkenazi (his centrist coalition government allies), Netanyahu flew to the Saudi city of Neom, on the Red Sea coast, in a private plane belonging to businessman Udi Angel.

In a gesture of rapprochement, Saudi Arabia has allowed Israeli commercial aircraft to fly over its airspace in transit to the Emirates and Bahrain.

The aircraft's path from Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport, where it took off before 8 p.m. Sunday, was tracked by flight-tracking website Flightradar 24 along the Dead Sea, the lower valley of the Jordan and the Gulf of Aqaba.

The Gulfstream 4 SP private jet, which the prime minister had already used to visit Vladimir Putin in Moscow, returned to Israel after midnight after being parked in Neom for about three hours.

ABSOLUTELY rare Israeli flight direct to new Saudi mega-city Neom on Red Sea shore

It was Bibi's ex-fav bizjet t7-cpx.

Back to Tel Aviv after 5 hours on ground pic.twitter.com/Ty9aedYbsK

- avi scharf (@avischarf) November 23, 2020

Topaz Luz, Netanyahu's young advisor for social media, partially broke the law of silence by tweeting at dawn: “Gantz is a politician [in connection with the opening of an investigation by the Ministry of Defense for alleged corruption on the head of the Government] while Netanyahu makes peace ”.

The head of US diplomacy also quietly tweeted on Sunday: "Constructive visit to Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salmán in Neom."

Pompeo, who visited Israel last week, where he sparked controversy over his presence in the occupied territories of the West Bank and the Golan Heights, tries to attract Saudi Arabia to the group of Gulf countries that, such as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, have normalized their diplomatic relations with the Jewish state and they face a common front in their policy of "maximum pressure" on Iran.

Prince Bin Salmán is in favor of following in the footsteps of both neighboring nations, but his father, King Salmán, prefers to act with caution.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud warned on Saturday that his country would not establish relations with Israel until there was "a comprehensive peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians," according to the Saudi-sponsored Arab Peace Initiative. Saudi in 2002 and endorsed by the Arab League.

The 35-year-old crown prince, considered the real strongman of the kingdom, has declared in the past that both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to live on his land.

He also believes that Israel is a strategic ally in the region to contain the advance of Iran.

A senior Saudi official also confirmed to

the meeting between Netanyahu and Bin Salmán, in which, as he specified, no agreement was reached.

The normalization of relations between the two countries and the strategy against Iran were the issues discussed, according to the same source.

Shortly before flying to Saudi Arabia on Sunday, Netanyahu had quietly requested in Jerusalem that the new US Administration of Democrat Joe Biden not reactivate the nuclear deal with Tehran, signed by President Barack Obama in 2015 and from which Washington withdrew in 2018 under the term of Republican Donald Trump.