Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, sparked a furious backlash from Saudi Arabia after suggesting that a Palestinian state could be established in Saudi Arabia as they have “a lot of land there”.

Speaking to a pro-government channel over the weekend, Netan­yahu replied to a slip of the tongue by the interviewer who said there would be no advance on normalisation with Saudi Arabia without a “Saudi state”.

“You mean a Palestinian state, unless of course you want a Palestinian state to be in Saudi? They have a lot of land there, a lot of land,” Netanyahu told the Channel 14 interviewer, who replied that it was worth exploring.

Saudi Arabia looked to be heading towards a normalisation deal with Israel before the attacks in October