BEIRUT, Lebanon — A covert meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia would be a historic first, suggesting that the two countries were making progress toward establishing formal diplomatic relations.
But the contradictory news on Monday about such a meeting — with unsourced Israeli media reports saying it had taken place clashing with a denial from the Saudi foreign minister — highlighted the domestic politics in each country and signaled how far apart the two countries remained from the prospect of exchanging ambassadors.
Israeli news outlets reported early Monday that Mr. Netanyahu and the head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, Yossi Cohen, had flown to Saudi Arabia on a private jet on Sunday evening. In a meeting with Prince Mohammed in Neom, a futuristic city planned near the Red Sea coast, the three men discussed Iran, which both countries consider a threat, and the possible normalization of relations, the Israeli reports said.
Mr. Netanyahu refused to comment, but Israeli journalists close to him were among the first to report the story. Flight tracking websites documented the jet’s trip from Tel Aviv to Saudi Arabia, and three officials close to Mr. Netanyahu alluded to the meeting’s significance, appearing to confirm that it happened.
“The fact that the meeting took place and was made public — even if it was in only a semiofficial way — is something of great importance,” Yoav Galant, the education minister, said in a radio interview. “This is something our ancestors dreamed about.”
But hours after the news echoed around the world, the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, denied that any meeting with Mr. Netanyahu had taken place, insisting that Prince Mohammed had met only with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was completing a seven-nation farewell tour.
“There was no meeting,” Prince Faisal wrote in a text message. He said that he had accompanied Mr. Pompeo throughout his visit and that “Saudi and American officials were the only ones present.”
The conflicting statements reflected different priorities: Israel and the Trump administration have promoted the idea that a diplomatic opening between Saudi Arabia and Israel is only a matter of time, while the Saudis have insisted that an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal must come first.
Mr. Netanyahu, who has often been accused of leaking reports for political gain, had ample reason to trumpet any incremental steps in building relations with Saudi Arabia. He is eager to improve his standing at home as a leader who can turn Israel’s foes into friends and to divert attention from corruption allegations.
The calculation is different for Prince Mohammed, who has told American visitors that he does not consider Israel an enemy but that opening official relations too quickly could inspire extremists and be used against him in a region where Israel remains unpopular.
Reports of the visit followed agreements by the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan to establish formal relations with Israel, moves that the Trump administration pushed to crack a boycott of Israel by most Arab states in solidarity with the Palestinians.
Monday’s kerfuffle recalled a similar mix-up in June, when Mr. Netanyahu announced a new partnership with the Emirates to fight the coronavirus, touting it as a major breakthrough in relations, which the Emirates then denied. Analysts said that Mr. Netanyahu’s public touting of the deal was premature, and forced the Emirates to back off.
Despite the momentary humiliation, the episode did not seem to hurt Mr. Netanyahu or damage diplomacy between the two countries. Less than two months later, they established full diplomatic relations.
A similar agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel would be much more significant because of the kingdom’s size, wealth and standing in the Muslim world as the protector of the Islamic holy sites. But there was no indication that such a move was imminent.
Israel and Saudi Arabia have never had formal diplomatic relations, and Prince Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, said as recently as Saturday that the kingdom had long supported normalization but only after an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. The Saudis’ Arab Peace Initiative in 2002 offered Israel full normalization with the Arab world after the Palestinians achieved statehood.
But the kingdom’s tone when speaking about Israel has shifted in recent years, and rapidly in recent months.
Prince Mohammed, 35, a son of the Saudi monarch and the kingdom’s de facto ruler, has said that both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to their land and that Israel has overlapping economic and security interests with Arab states, specifically over their shared animosity toward Iran.
The Saudi news media has begun publishing articles about Israeli culture and politics, and last month a Saudi satellite channel aired extensive interviews with Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a former intelligence chief and ambassador to Washington, who harshly criticized the Palestinian leadership.
Saudi Arabia played a quiet but instrumental role in aiding the Trump administration’s effort to broker the diplomatic openings between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan, according to a senior Israeli official. Last month, Saudi Arabia opened its airspace to commercial flights to and from Israel, saying it had done so at the request of the Emirates. Most Arab states block such overflights as part of their boycott of the Jewish state.
The lack of significant protests in the Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan after their agreements with Israel could also help clear the way for Saudi Arabia to follow suit, the Israeli official said.
Pushing ahead with normalization in the waning days of the Trump administration would not necessarily create problems for the incoming Biden administration.
Although President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. took a tough line on Saudi Arabia during the campaign, vowing to end American support for the Saudi military in Yemen and to treat the Saudis like “the pariah that they are,” analysts say he is likely to welcome further Saudi-Israeli rapprochement. It remains unclear whether his administration will push for it in the same way President Trump has or seek to use the possibility as leverage in efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Responding to reports of the Saudi meeting, Mr. Gantz assailed what he called “the leak of the prime minister’s secret flight to Saudi Arabia” as “an irresponsible move.”
A Netanyahu adviser, Topaz Luk, countered “Gantz plays politics while the prime minister makes peace.”
Reports of Mr. Netanyahu’s visit to Neom followed the end of the virtual Group of 20 summit meeting hosted by Saudi Arabia over the weekend and coincided with Mr. Pompeo’s arrival for a meeting with Prince Mohammed on Sunday night.
A State Department statement about the visit did not mention Mr. Netanyahu.
Air-traffic monitoring websites showed a flight leaving Tel Aviv on Sunday around 7:30 p.m. that dropped off the radar near Neom about an hour later. The same plane reappeared and flew back to Tel Aviv after midnight.
Avi Scharf, editor of the English-language edition of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, posted a map of the first flight on Twitter on Monday.
“ABSOLUTELY rare Israeli flight direct to new Saudi megacity Neom on Red Sea shore,” Mr. Scharf wrote, noting that the jet used was one that Mr. Netanyahu had used before.
Ben Hubbard reported from Beirut, David M. Halbfinger from Jerusalem and Ronen Bergman from Tel Aviv. Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.
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