As the US intensifies its efforts to bring about peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia, pressure for Jerusalem to make concessions to the Palestinians has also grown in recent days.
Israeli-Saudi normalization has long been conditional on some kind of tangible progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front. As The Jerusalem Post has reported in recent months, Riyadh is looking for a greater concession than Jerusalem made in conjunction with the 2020 Abraham Accords, when Israel agreed to drop its plan to apply sovereignty to West Bank settlements and normalized relations with the United Arab Emirates.
The Saudis are looking for concrete steps toward Palestinian statehood. Merely a commitment not to annex settlements for the next four years would not suffice for the prominent Gulf state, Israel Hayom reported multiple diplomatic sources as saying on Monday.
The Biden administration has also been pushing Israel to do more for the Palestinians. This is in order to gain domestic support for its normalization push, an American diplomatic source said, confirming reporting on Kan.
The elements that the US would be contributing to Saudi Arabia in the framework of such a deal, such as weapons sales, a mutual defense treaty, and a civilian nuclear program, would be a tough sell to Democrats, who have spoken out on human rights issues in the kingdom, especially after the murder of US-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, June 6, 2023 (credit: VIA REUTERS)Saudi demands related to the Palestinians run counter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s messaging. Even before the Abraham Accords, Netanyahu tried to decouple the Palestinian issue from normalization with the Arab world, saying that countries in the region value Israel’s technological prowess, and military might, and seek an alliance against Iran. While that remains true, the Palestinian cause still carries some cache in Arab capitals.
In the case of Riyadh, though Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is the active ruler, King Salman has insisted on a sweetener for the Palestinians in any agreement with Israel.
Netanyahu’s coalition firmly against concessions to Palestinians
Netanyahu’s governing coalition is made up of parties that oppose Palestinian statehood, and their members have begun to speak out against possible steps in that direction.
National Missions Minister Orit Struck said that the National Religious Party “certainly won’t agree” to concessions to the Palestinians.
“We are done with withdrawals,” she told KAN. “We are done freezing settlements in Judea and Samaria. This is the consensus among the entire right wing.”
Discussions about Israel-Saudi peace reached a new pitch over the weekend when US President Joe Biden said in a 2024 reelection campaign event that “there’s a rapprochement that may be underway.” New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote that Biden was weighing a security pact with the Saudis. US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan visited Jeddah “to discuss bilateral and regional matters, including initiatives to advances. Common vision for a more peaceful, secure, prosperous and stable Middle East region interconnected with the world,” the White House said.
Netanyahu said that a high-speed train project the government launched on Sunday could “be able to connect Israel by train to Saudi Arabia and the Arabian Peninsula. We are working on that, too.”
The negotiations towards Israel-Saudi normalization in recent months have been between the US and Saudi Arabia, with Jerusalem receiving updates from Washington.
Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Yuli Edelstein, of Netanyahu’s Likud party, said on Sunday that it is premature to discuss a deal, and if there will be one, “there are clauses that are far more important or problematic than declarations in the Palestinian realm…There are some things we can live with better and some things we can live with less well.”
Meanwhile, Iran expressed opposition to a Saudi-Israel agreement, with Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani saying that normalization would harm regional peace and stability.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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