Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the United Nations on Friday that Israel is on the “cusp” of normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia and that Palestinians should not get to “veto” the move.
Addressing the General Assembly in New York, Netanyahu said agreements in 2020 to establish formal ties with three other Arab states had already “heralded the dawn of a new age of peace.”
“But I believe that we are at the cusp of an even more dramatic breakthrough – a historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia.”
“Such a peace will go a long way to ending the Arab-Israeli conflict. It will encourage other Arab states to normalize their relations with Israel,” he said.
Netanyahu firmly rejected the insistence of Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas, in his own UN speech on Thursday, that there could be no peace in the Middle East without a Palestinian state.
“We must not give the Palestinians a veto over new peace treaties with Arab states,” Netanyahu said.
“The Palestinians could greatly benefit from a broader peace. They should be part of that process. But they should not have a veto over the process.”
