Shlomo Karhi, the Israeli minister of communications, delivered the nation’s first speech on Wednesday at a conference in the capital of Saudi Arabia. Karhi said to the audience at the 2023 Extraordinary Congress of the Universal Postal Union, “As demonstrated by the Abrahamic Accords, outcomes when nations converge on mutual goals can be monumentally transformative.”
The main platform for international postal cooperation is the UPU, an organization under the United Nations. He expressed gratitude to Saudi Arabia’s rulers as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for “starting the blossoming ties between our nations.”
“Our common respect for God and tradition can serve as a bedrock for harmony between our peoples,” he concluded, thanking the Saudis for their hospitality.
Karhi, whose family immigrated to Israel from Tunisia, blessed the attendees in flawless Arabic, referring to it as his “mother tongue.” David Bitan, the chairman of the Knesset’s Economic Affairs Committee, was part of a 14-person group that was led by Karhi when it landed in Saudi Arabia on Monday.
It is an enormous honor to represent the State of Israel on this significant trip to Saudi Arabia. It is especially significant to travel during Sukkot, a Jewish holiday that is marked by renewal, thankfulness, and blessing, Karhi told JNS from Riyadh.
Haim Katz, the minister of tourism for Israel, made history last week when the Saudi government gave him a visa to enter the country. He traveled to Riyadh to attend a conference of the United Nations World Tourism Organization and commemorate World Tourism Day, which is observed every year on September 27.
The back-to-back ministerial trips are the most recent proof that a normalization agreement between the two nations, which is expected to become more possible in the upcoming months, is indeed on the horizon.
John Kirby, a spokesman for the U.S. The National Security Council claimed on Friday that Riyadh and Jerusalem had reached consensus on the general terms of a potential normalization deal that the United States might broker.
In the midst of ongoing efforts to include the Sunni monarchy in the Abrahamic Accords, he remarked, “All sides have hammered out, I think, a basic framework for what, you know, what we might be able to drive at.” In 2020, agreements mediated by the Trump administration restored diplomatic ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan.
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