US President Donald Trump said he hoped for an early expansion of the Abraham Accords and hopes Saudi Arabia will join the pact that normalized diplomatic relations between Israel and some Arab states.
“I hope to see Saudi Arabia come in, and I hope to see others come in. I think when Saudi Arabia comes in, everyone comes in,” Trump said in an interview broadcast Friday night. Fox Business Network.
Trump said he had “very good conversations” on Wednesday with states that have indicated their willingness to join the agreements.
“I think they’ll all come in very soon,” Trump said in the interview, which was recorded Thursday.
The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed the agreements in 2020 during Trump’s first term in the White House, breaking a long-standing taboo to become the first Arab states to recognize Israel in a quarter-century. Morocco and Sudan did the same.
Trump, who convened Muslim and European leaders in Egypt to discuss the future of the Gaza Strip on Monday, presented his plan to end the attack on Gaza as a catalyst for a broader regional peace deal.
He said then that more countries would join the Abraham Accords initiative and even floated the idea of a peace deal between Middle East archenemies Iran and Israel, telling the Israeli parliament that he thought Iran wanted one: “Wouldn’t that be nice?”
In early June, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar ruled out the possibility of Pakistan joining the Abraham Accords, stating that such a move would effectively mean abandoning the country’s long-standing support for a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict and recognizing Israel.
“We are not willing to recognize Israel until the two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict is accepted,” Dar said. “There is no change in our stated policy on the question of Palestine.”
