Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, made a secret trip to Oman, the Israeli government announced on Friday, in the clearest sign yet of the warming ties between Israel and the Gulf Arab states. Like most Arab countries, Oman does not have formal diplomatic relations with Israel and it is rare for an Israeli leader to visit any of the neighbouring Middle Eastern countries. However, Israel has been making increasingly intense contact with the Gulf Arab states through secret channels, motivated largely by a shared opposition to Iran. Mr Netanyahu, accompanied by his wife and senior Israeli security officials, flew to Oman on Thursday and was received by Sultan Qaboos bin Said. The visit was only made public after the Israeli delegation returned home on Friday afternoon. Israel said the trip came "after lengthy contacts between the two countries". Unusually, the trip was prominently highlighted in Oman's state media. Arab governments often prefer to keep their contact with Israel as discreet as possible.<doc-sep>Benjamin Netanyahu's office said Friday that the Israeli prime minister has returned from a visit to the Gulf state of Oman, where he joined the country's leader in the first meeting of its kind in more than 20 years. The office said in a statement Friday that Netanyahu had been invited by Oman's Sultan Qaboos bin Said after lengthy communications. Israel and Oman do not have diplomatic relations. The meeting was the first between leaders of the two countries since 1996. Former Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin made a similar surprise visit to Oman two years earlier in 1994. The sultanate has long had a quiet role in fostering negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians and has openly called for the need for a Palestinian state while also acknowledging a need for an Israeli state. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also paid a three-day visit to Oman earlier this week. "Israel benefits by having a direct link with a member of Arab League, and the Palestinians are benefiting from having the help of Oman reaching out to Israelis without directly conceding anything. It is a win-win move," said Gamal Abdel Gawad, an academic adviser to the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. "The Palestinians are taking a strong position against the Trump administration and Netanyahu and yet they have to talk to the Israelis." While historic, Netanyahu's meeting did not immediately signal a breakthrough in peace efforts because Oman does not have the clout or leverage of nations like Saudi Arabia to strongly advocate for either side or to push them closer to the negotiating table. Netanyahu and his wife were joined on the trip by the head of Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, his foreign ministry director, and other defense officials. Netanyahu has repeatedly stated in recent years that Israel has developed good relations with several Arab states, despite a lack of official ties. The Israeli prime minister and the Omani sultan issued a joint statement saying the two sides "discussed ways to advance the Middle East peace process and discussed a number of issues of mutual interest to achieve peace and stability in the Middle East." Oman, which sits on the southeastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, with Saudi Arabia to its north and Iran to its east, has a long record of being a quiet broker in the region, opting to stay on the sidelines of the rivalry between the two regional powerhouses. Although it is a member of the Saudi-led six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, it did not join the kingdom in its boycott of Qatar or the war in Yemen. Its foreign minister made a rare visit by an Arab official to the West Bank earlier this year.<doc-sep>Oman gets to show the West a relatively liberal and modern face of the Gulf and one that is in step with the policies of the United States administration, the official said. Israel, for its part, hopes the visit will ultimately lead to the return of some kind of diplomatic representation in Oman. Israel maintained another trade office in Qatar until that, too, was shut down in 2009. For years, the Israeli Foreign Ministry has run a Twitter account that it calls @IsraelintheGCC, referring to the Gulf Cooperation Council, a political and economic alliance of six countries in the Arabian Peninsula including Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, none that have formal diplomatic relations with Israel. The ministry describes the account as the “official channel of the virtual Israeli Embassy to GCC countries, dedicated to promoting dialogue with the people of the GCC region.” In an interview last year with a London-based newspaper owned by a Saudi businessman, Israel’s military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, said Israel was willing to share intelligence with moderate Arab states as part of the effort against Iran. Mr. Netanyahu’s visit came days after the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, was in Oman. Sultan Qaboos has expressed interest in mediating between the Palestinians and Israel. But Ehud Yaari, an Israel-based fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Israel was more interested in Oman as a conduit to Tehran. Despite the talk of an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, tensions keep rising between Israel and Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, the Islamic militant group that rivals Mr. Abbas. On Friday, four Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire during stormy weekly protests along the Gaza border and a Gaza militant was killed when a bomb he was making exploded in his home. Israeli aircraft struck three Hamas military posts and Gaza militants fired a barrage of more than a dozen short-range rockets into southern Israel. Several were intercepted while others missed their mark. After midnight, Israel responded with more airstrikes. The public nature of the visit to Oman is something of a coup for Mr. Netanyahu, a conservative who has long touted Israel’s hush-hush ties with former Arab foes as part of the Sunni axis against Shiite Iran.<doc-sep>cnxps.cmd.push(function () { cnxps({ playerId: '36af7c51-0caf-4741-9824-2c941fc6c17b' }).render('4c4d856e0e6f4e3d808bbc1715e132f6'); }); if(window.location.pathname.indexOf("656089") != -1){console.log("hedva connatix");document.getElementsByClassName("divConnatix")[0].style.display ="none";} Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday made a surprise visit to Oman, an Arab Muslim state which has no diplomatic ties with Israel.He did so at the invitation of the country’s leader Sultan Sayyid Qaboos bin Said Al Said, so that the two men could discuss regional issues.Netanyahu was in Oman, just two days after a Palestinian delegation led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was in Oman. Abbas also met with Sultan Qaboos.The visit comes amidst the possible break through in Egyptian efforts to restore calm between Israel and Hamas over Gaza and the pending release of US President Donald Trump’s long waited peace plan.The last such Israeli visit occurred in 1996, when former prime minister Shimon Peres, traveled to Oman to meet with the sultan and to open an Israel Trade Representation office, which was shut four years later, after the start of the Second Intifada in October 2000. The economic ties never reached the level of full diplomatic relations.Netanyahu has long argued that the Arab world is open to normalized economic ties with Israel, even in advance of any resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After Friday’s visit the Prime Minister’s Office said, “Netanyahu's visit is a significant step in implementing the policy outlined by Prime Minister Netanyahu to strengthen ties with the countries of the region, while leveraging Israel's advantages in security, technology and the economy.”Netanyahu and the Sultan talked about “ways to advance the peace process in the Middle East and discussed a number of issues of mutual interest for peace and stability in the Middle East,” the PMO said.Netanyahu was joined on the trip by his wife Sara, Mossad Director Yossi Cohen , National Security Adviser and National Security Council Director Meir Ben-Shabbat, Foreign Ministry Director General Yuval Rotem, the head of the Prime Minister's staff, Yoav Horowitz and the Prime Minister's Military Secretary, Brig.-Gen. Avi Bluth.The media was informed of the trip only after it occurred. Netanyahu hinted at a new opening with the Arab world on Thursday when he spoke at the launch of the Israeli Innovation Center at the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation in Tel Aviv.“We always thought that if we solved the Palestinian problem it would open up the doors to peace with the broader Arab world. And that's certainly true if you could do it. But it may mean that equally true and perhaps even truer is that if you open up to the Arab world and you normalize relations with them it will open the door for an eventual reconciliation and peace with the Palestinians,” Netanyahu said.“We should do both but I think you should not underestimate the openness and the thirst in the Arab world today for Israel. And the reason, the first reason before anything else, is that we're there in innovation,” he said.Communications Minister Ayoub Kara said the visit was a testament to declarations “about the good relations that are developing between the Israeli government and the Sunni countries that oppose the Iranian terror, which also threatens them.”“In the coming days and until President Trump presents his diplomatic [peace] plan, there will be more pleasant surprises and embraces of Israel from the Gulf states. "Reuters contributed to this report.<doc-sep>
The trip is a major coup for Benjamin Netanyahu, who said he wants to bolster ties with the Arab world Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made the first visit to Oman by an Israeli premier in over 20 years, officials said Friday, in an apparent sign of growing regional ties. The surprise meeting with Oman's Sultan Qaboos late Thursday, which was kept secret until Netanyahu's return home, comes despite the two nations having no diplomatic ties. The trip is a major coup for Netanyahu, who has said he wants to bolster ties with the Arab world despite a stalemate on the Palestinian front. "A special visit in Oman -- we're making history!" Netanyahu wrote on Twitter, posting a video of his reception and meeting. Netanyahu and Sultan Qaboos discussed the Middle East peace process "and other issues of shared interest", the Israeli premier's office said in a statement. Netanyahu was accompanied by his wife Sara and his delegation included Mossad intelligence chief Yossi Cohen and National Security Advisor Meir Ben-Shabbat. The visit came at the invitation of Sultan Qaboos and followed "lengthy contacts between the two countries", the Israeli statement said. Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas also visited Oman this week, according to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa. The Israeli premier's trip formed part of "the policy outlined by Prime Minister Netanyahu on deepening relations with the states of the region", his office said. Oman's state broadcaster showed Netanyahu and his delegation walking alongside Sultan Qaboos -- who has rarely been seen in recent pictures -- and other Omani officials in traditional garb. In 1994, then-Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin visited Oman, and acting prime minister Shimon Peres also made a visit in 1996 when the two countries agreed to open trade representative offices. In October 2000, Oman closed the offices after the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada. Israel currently has full diplomatic relations with only two Arab states, Egypt and Jordan. 'Open the door' Netanyahu has long been seeking alliances with other Arab states which, like Israel, face an emboldened Iran, stressing that such ties could enable peace with the Palestinians. "We always thought that if we solved the Palestinian problem it would open up the doors to peace with the broader Arab world," Netanyahu said Thursday at the opening of an innovation centre named after Peres. But "if you open up to the Arab world and you normalise relations with them, it will open the door for an eventual reconciliation and peace with the Palestinians," he said. Israeli technology and innovation, Netanyahu said, was a "boon to peace" with Arab states. "Quite a few of the neighbouring countries... are reaching out to Israel and normalising relations with Israel which is a step towards peace because of innovation," he said. "They want it for water, they want it for health, they want it for IT, they want it for solar energy, they want it for everything."