Forging formal Israeli-Saudi relations as part of an emerging trilateral deal involving Washington would require a calming of the Gaza war and a discussion of prospects for Palestinian governance, US Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew said on Tuesday.
“There’s going to have to be some period of quiet, I think, in Gaza, and there’s going to have to be a conversation about how do you deal with the question of the future of Palestinian governance,” Lew told the Israel Democracy Institute’s Eli Hurvitz Conference on Economy and Society.
He spoke in the aftermath of US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s visit to Saudi Arabia and Israel, in which he sought to advance a Saudi deal.
Good progress being made
The United States and Saudi Arabia are close to finalizing a security pact, which is one of the three pillars on which the deal rests and is the first portion of the deal that would be completed.
“We’re making very good progress” on that aspect of the deal, Lew said.
The conversation about normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia is more complicated, Lew said, as he referenced the third pillar of the agreement, which is the pathway to a Palestinian state.
That Palestinian state, he said, would have to be a “demilitarized entity” and Israel would have to retain the right to defend itself.
“Now, if you start with that frame, It’s a question of how willing are leaders to get into that conversation and that’s what we’re going to find out,” he said.
Israeli regional integration is particularly important to combat Iranian regional aggression, Lew said.
He referenced the united work of five armies — the US, France, Great Britain, Jordan, and Israel — which took to the skies to defend the Jewish state from an Iranian missile and drone attack, as an example of what the future could be like.
President Isaac Herzog told the conference that Sullivan had discussed the Saudi deal with him, as he threw his support behind that initiative.
“This is a move that could bring about tremendous change, a historic ‘game-changer’ that constitutes a victory over the empire of evil.”
He stressed, “I very much hope that this possibility is being seriously considered, as the empire of evil sought on October 7 to destroy the chance for normalization. Our struggle, in the end, is not only a fight against Hamas. It is a wider, strategic, global, and historic battle, and we must do everything to integrate into the grand vision of normalization.”
US President Joe Biden, two months before the October 7 attack, presented a visionary plan for the picture that turned Israel and the region into a global transit hub, and Israel should do everything possible transform those ideas into reality.
Comments are closed.