When U.S. President Donald Trump lands in Riyadh on Tuesday, he will be greeted with opulent ceremonies, gilded palaces and the prospect of $1 trillion in investments. But, the raging war in the Gaza Strip has denied him one goal he has long craved: Saudi-Israel normalization.
Behind the scenes, U.S. officials are quietly pressing Israel to agree to an immediate ceasefire in Gaza — one of Saudi Arabia's preconditions for any restart of normalization talks, said two Gulf sources close to official circles and a U.S. official.
Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff told an audience at the Israeli embassy in Washington this week that he imminently expected progress on expanding the Abraham Accords, a set of deals brokered by Trump in his first term under which Arab states including the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco recognized Israel.
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