Saudi Arabia has let the Biden administration know that resolving Palestinian issues is critical for any normalization deal with Israel, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Wednesday.

“It is also clear from what we hear from the Saudis that if this process is to move forward the Palestinian piece is going to be very important too,” he said in an interview with the podcast “Pod Save the World.”

He spoke as the Biden administration has been increasingly public about its pursuit of a security pact with Saudi Arabia that would include a normalization deal with Israel. It’s expected that Israel would have to make concessions to the Palestinians as part of the deal.

Such a deal would come on top of the US-backed 2020 Abraham Accords, in which Israel agreed to suspend the annexation of West Bank settlement in exchange for normalization deals with four Arab countries: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan.... Read More: JPost