Saudi Arabia likely to join Abraham Accords by end of year, says Trump

"I think that the Abraham Accords are going to start filling up very quickly. I actually know it.”

Normalisation between Saudi and Israel has long been sought by both Washington and Jerusalem as a major step toward securing the Jewish state’s place in the region.

Indeed, it has been widely reported that one of Hamas’ key motivations to launch the October 7 attacks, sparking the Gaza War, was to prevent such a step, which is understood to have been under negotiation at the time.

However, Riyadh is said to have made normalisation conditional upon the establishment of a pathway to a recognised Palestinian state, a move to which the Netanyahu government is fiercely opposed.

Hours after Trump’s Time interview was published, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was forced to apologise for “inappropriate” remarks he made about Saudi Arabia when rubbishing that very concept.

The leader of the far-right Religious Zionism party told a religious conference: "If Saudi Arabia tells us ‘normalisation in exchange for a Palestinian state,’ friends — no thank you. Keep riding camels in the desert."

Posting an apology to X, Smotrich said: "My comment about Saudi Arabia was absolutely inappropriate, and I apologise for the insult it caused."

However, he also reiterated his opposition to Palestinian statehood, adding: "I expect from the Saudis not to do us harm and not to deny our heritage, our tradition and the rights of the Jewish people to its historic homelands in Judea and Samaria [the biblical term for the West Bank], and to establish true peace with us."

Elsewhere, the White House also denied that Trump was considering building the Third Temple in Jerusalem.

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about the prospect by a reporter from a Charedi outlet in reference to Trump's remodelling of the White House ballroom.

Hailing Trump as "the greatest builder of this era", the journalist enquired whether the question of a Third Temple had ever come up in discussions about Israel.

"It has not," replied Leavitt bluntly.

The two destroyed temples were the holiest sites in Judaism and sat on the Temple Mount, which is now home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The site is now governed by the Jerusalem Waqf, an Islamic regulatory body under the auspices of Jordan.