The Biden administration has for some time sought to dangle the prospect of Saudi recognition of Israel as part of an Israeli-Hamas cease-fire agreement that would also involve the terrorists’ freeing of Israeli hostages. It has been widely assumed that if Riyadh recognizes the Jewish State, it would do so under the umbrella of the Abraham Accords. For its part, the White House has made no attempt to dispel that assumption. Indeed, the administration initially appointed Daniel Shapiro, a former ambassador to Israel, as special envoy for the accords (he has since taken the slightly lower-ranking position as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East).

The administration’s inability to move Benjamin Netanyahu to focus on hostage release rather than indefinitely prolonging the four-month-old war, outlining a future for Gaza and curbing his extremist ministers’ more outlandish statements regarding that future — or, better yet, just firing them — has increasingly frustrated Riyadh. Earlier this week, that frustration burst into the open in response to White House spokesman John Kirby’s assertion that “we were, before the 7th of October, and are still now having discussions with our counterparts in the region, Israel and Saudi Arabia … about trying to move forward with a........

© The Hill