OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Triathlete Shachar Sagiv has become the first Israeli athlete to
compete in
Saudi Arabia, the Israeli Olympic Committee said Sunday, in the
latest sign of growing informal ties between the former enemies.
اضافة اعلان
Olympic committee
head Yael Arad called Sagiv’s presence at the Saudi NEOM leg of the Super
League Triathlon on Saturday “a very significant breakthrough”.
“In the past year
we’ve seen many Arab states come to terms with the fact that hosting an
international tournament means hosting Israelis,” she said in a statement.
A Saudi official
did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sagiv, 28, was
eliminated from the race after falling in a bike ride, failing to meet his goal
of improving his rank, his coach Lior Cohen wrote on Facebook.
Sagiv’s
participation comes amid speculation about future bilateral ties between Saudi
Arabia and Israel, after the
Gulf kingdom opened its airspace to Israeli planes
in July and recently allowed an Israeli businessman into its borders.
Saudi Arabia does
not recognize Israel and did not join the 2020 US-brokered Abraham Accords that
saw Irsael establish ties with two of the kingdom’s neighbors, the UAE, and
Bahrain.
Riyadh has repeatedly
said it would stick to the decades-old Arab League position of not establishing
official ties with Israel until the conflict with the Palestinians is resolved.
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