Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is slated to participate at a leaders’ climate summit organized by the Biden administration on April 22. With the summit online, Netanyahu will not get the chance to meet in person with Saudi King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, also among the 40 leaders invited to the summit. For Netanyahu — if still at the helm of Israel — this would be a second wasted opportunity in just a few weeks. Israel’s prime minister had hoped to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during his planned visit recently to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), but the Saudis declined the meeting even before the visit itself got canceled.

Interviewed on Ynet March 15, Netanyahu had said Israel was on its the way to making peace with four more countries in the region, stating, “I brought four peace agreements [in reference to agreements with the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco], and there are another four on the way. I talked about one of them [one of the leaders in the region] yesterday.” Netanyahu did not specify the four, but analysts said that he was referring to Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, and either Mauritania or Niger.

Then, on March 21, two days only before general elections in Israel, Netanyahu referred publicly to ties with Saudi Arabia. Interviewed by the army radio station, Netanyahu said, “We will have direct flights for Muslim Israeli pilgrims from Tel Aviv to Mecca.”

The promise of the prime minister was probably directed first and foremost at the Israeli-Arab electorate, in a last-ditch effort to win their support at the voting stations. Still, Riyadh’s reaction was swift and painful. On March 22, former senior adviser to the Saudi government Nawaf Obaid published an editorial in the Palestinian Al Quds newspaper, saying his country would not normalize ties with Israel until a peace agreement establishes an independent Palestinian state.