•Marco Rubio
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said today that more countries are ready to normalise relations with Israel but the decision would await a broader regional agreement.
Rubio, who was touring a US-led multinational centre in Israel aimed at coordinating a ceasefire in Gaza, said that a sustained end to the war would encourage more countries to join the so-called Abraham Accords, under which a number of Arab countries normalised ties with Israel in 2020.
“We have a lot of countries that want to join” the accords, he said.
“I think there are some countries you could probably add right now if you wanted to, but we want to do a big thing about it, and so we’re working on it,” Rubio told reporters on a visit to Israel.
“So I think that would be great, and I think that could be a byproduct of achieving some of this,” he said, referring to the Gaza ceasefire.
Rubio did not mention specific countries, saying that they needed to address their domestic audiences first, but said “there’s some bigger than others”.
Saudi Arabia had been in talks with the United States on normalising ties with Israel, in what would be a historic milestone as the kingdom is home to Islam’s two holiest sites.
But the Gulf kingdom stepped back on normalisation after war broke out in Gaza following Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023.
Both US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu see the Abraham Accords, which saw the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco forge ties with Israel, as a crowning achievement.
But Saudi Arabia has insisted it cannot normalise ties without progress toward an independent Palestinian state, a prospect long opposed by Netanyahu.
