A Saudi newspaper has appointed a Jewish rabbi as its regular columnist, reports the Arab website Al-Assisi, which quotes the Hebrew newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

The newspaper reported that the Saudi-language English-language newspaper, Arab News, had appointed Rabbi Mark Schneier as a regular article writer.

"This made Schneier the first rabbi to write for a Saudi newspaper on a regular basis," they added.

And the paper continued: "Schneier is a well-known American rabbi who founded and heads the Foundation for Interfaith Understanding (Judaism and Islam)."

For the past 15 years, Schneier has been honored in the palaces of Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, and Newsweek has previously called him one of the 50 most influential rabbis in the United States.

And at the end of December, the Times of Israel revealed that a Jewish rabbi had been working for months to establish a recognized Jewish presence in Saudi Arabia, in an action that is the first of its kind.

The newspaper featured a number of photos and videos of the ultra-Orthodox rabbi Yaakov Israel Herzog, walking the streets of Riyadh and visiting several institutions where he stayed in public and was also accommodated in a hotel in the Saudi capital with an open identity.

A month earlier, Yedioth Ahronoth reported that a delegation of American Jews had met in Saudi Arabia with government officials and members of the royal family, in a move that paved the way for the kingdom to push for normalization with Israel.

Saudi Arabia has confirmed, in repeated official statements, that it will not normalize its relations with Israel without advancing peace talks with the Palestinians.

On November 1, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan reaffirmed his country's compliance with the condition of establishing a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders before moving to the option of normalizing relations with Israel.