The Kingdom of Bahrain will “eventually” establish diplomatic ties with the Jewish State, the country’s Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa said Thursday in an exclusive interview with The Times of Israel.

Asked on the sidelines of the Middle East conference in Warsaw, Khalifa responded affirmatively when questioned if he believed Bahrain and Israel would form full diplomatic relations. “Yes, eventually,” the minister said.

Both Khalifa and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended the U.S.-led summit in the Polish capital this week. Netanyahu stood side-by-side with Arab leaders at a conference hailed by United States Vice President, Mike Pence, as the “beginning of a new era.”

Pence observed that the summit saw “Prime Minister Netanyahu from the State of Israel, with leaders from Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, all breaking bread together, and later in this conference sharing honest perspectives on the challenges facing the area.”

At the opening dinner Wednesday night at Warsaw’s Royal Castle, the Israeli leader hailed the opportunity to address top officials from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain — none of which recognize the Jewish State.

“In a room of some 60 foreign ministers, representative of dozens of governments, an Israeli prime minister and the foreign ministers of the leading Arab countries stood together and spoke with unusual force, clarity and unity against the common threat of the Iranian regime,” Netanyahu noted.

“I think this marks a change and important understanding of what threatens our future, what we need to do to secure it, and the possibility that cooperation will extend beyond security in every realm of life,” he added.

So far, Israel only has diplomatic relations with two Arab countries, neighboring Egypt and Jordan. However, several Arab leaders have made public gestures toward Israel in recent months. Both the Arab world and Israel see Iran as their biggest outside threat and the U.S. as their key ally.

In April 2018, in an interview with The Atlantic magazine, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman said Israel had a “right” to a homeland. In October 2018, Oman publicly called for regional recognition of Israel, a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made an historic visit to the Sultanate.

In an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal in November, The Israel Project’s CEO and President, Josh Block, wrote that, “The rapprochement between Israel and the Arab world will change the region for the better.”

[Photo: Uwe Braun / Flickr]