Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said the main focus of the so-called Middle East peace efforts should be to bring Israel and the Palestinians back to the negotiating table.

The remarks were made on Thursday as the top Saudi diplomat as asked to comment on a suggestion that the Israeli-Saudi normalization is unlikely any time soon.

“We welcome the recent efforts to bring the parties together towards a comprehensive peace plan because an important step for a secure… Middle East remains a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. All other things will follow from that,” bin Farhan said in a virtual appearance at a US think tank.

“I believe that the focus now needs to be on getting the Palestinians and the Israelis back to the negotiating table. In the end, the only thing that can deliver lasting peace and lasting stability is an agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis. If we don’t manage to achieve that, we will continue to have that festering wound in the region,” the Saudi foreign minister told the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“We always envisioned that normalization would happen but we also need to have a Palestinian state and we need to have a Palestinian-Israeli peace plan,” he added.

Source: Israeli media