Last week, retired Saudi major-general Anwar Eshki led a delegation to Israel, where he met with various officials and made public statements about the Palestinian issue and other matters. The visit was highly unusual, unexpected, but not completely surprising — the general had revealed his contacts with Israel in June 2015 when he appeared in Washington alongside Dore Gold, the former Israeli ambassador to the UN who is a confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and was soon to be appointed director-general of the Foreign Ministry, the institution’s top bureaucrat. At the time, the two men admitted to a series of previous meetings, and their unstated implication in going public was to suggest common Saudi and Israeli concerns about the imminent P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran.

Although the latest visit may not have been Eshki’s first trip to Israel, this time he was reportedly accompanied by a number of Saudi academics and businesspeople. Despite the absence of mutual diplomatic recognition, all of these individuals would have needed special dispensation from the Saudi government to make the journey. The only photographs published so far show Eshki standing with Israeli Knesset members and Palestinian officials. He also met with President Mahmoud Abbas during an earlier side trip to Ramallah. In an interview with Israel Army Radio, the general stated, “There will be no peace with the Arab countries before there is peace with the Palestinians…The Israel-Palestinian conflict is not the source of terrorism, but it does create fertile ground for acts of terrorism in the region. If the conflict is resolved, the countries that exploit the Palestinian issue, namely Iran, will no longer be able to capitalize on it.”

Eshki also met with Gold again, albeit at a hotel rather than the Foreign Ministry. Gold’s continuing centrality in engagement with the Saudis suggests that other dynamics (and perhaps tensions) are at play. Since becoming director-general, he has concentrated on increasing the number of countries willing to recognize Israel and developing ties that already exist — hence Netanyahu’s recent African trip, which took in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Ethiopia. Last week, the West African Muslim-majority country of Guinea reestablished ties after a forty-nine-year break. Similarly, Gold has been working on links with the Arab world.

Read the full article at the Washington Institute.