Published in the issue of the Jerusalem Report dated 10 July 2023
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman meets with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Jeddah on June 7, 2023.
The idea that Saudi Arabia would be the next
Arab state to sign up to the Abraham Accords is as old as the Accords
themselves. It surfaced literally within
hours of the signing of the agreement on the White House lawn by Israel, the
United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain on September 15, 2020.
Then-US President Donald Trump told
reporters, in a press
conference following the signing, that he had spoken with Saudi Arabia’s
King Salman, and he believed that the kingdom would shortly follow suit. That statement
turned the tap on what became an unceasing flow of speculation about when the
magic moment might arrive.
The issue remains as
live today as ever. Just a few weeks ago
Israel’s foreign minister, Eli Cohen, said that normalization of ties with
Saudi Arabia is just a "matter of time." It was not a question of if, he maintained,
but of when. He dismissed the recent reconciliation
between Saudi Arabia and Iran – which some believed ruled out Saudi-Israel
normalization – as nothing more than "a façade." Pointing out that Saudi Arabia and Israel are
one in considering Iran to be an existential enemy, he said the reality is that
the Saudis would do anything to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
It is no secret that
prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has always given high priority to convincing
Saudi Arabia to sign up to the Accords.
Back in November 2020 he made what was meant to be a secret trip to
Saudi Arabia for a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the de
facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, a trip that soon became public knowledge. He has pushed that policy ever since. In a speech on February 19 he said he was still
actively trying to persuade Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords as that
would constitute a “quantum leap” towards regional peace.
Netanyahu has striven
hard to get the US administration on board.
Joe Biden came to the US presidency still wedded to the Obama strategy
of appeasing Iran in the hope of getting it to re-enter the failed nuclear
deal. Moreover, Biden had no wish to
engage with MBS, whom he believed responsible for master-minding the murder of
journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Washington has slowly
retreated from both positions. The nuclear deal with Iran is now dead in the
water, and senior Biden administration figures and US Senators have been speaking
to MBS about normalizing relations with Israel and signing up to the Abraham
Accords. Yet, despite efforts going back
nearly four years, Israel and Saudi Arabia remain deadlocked on the issue of
formal normalization.
MBS went on to describe
Israel as “a potential ally, with many interests we can pursue together. But,”
he added, “we have to solve some issues before we get to that.”
What are the issues that
inhibit Saudi Arabia from joining its main Gulf allies, the UAE and Bahrain, in
normalizing relations with Israel?
The biggest obstacle, perhaps, is that Saudi’s King Salman is acutely aware that the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative was conceived and proposed by his predecessor on the throne, then-Crown Prince Abdullah, his half-brother. The Plan, endorsed on a number of occasions by the Arab League, advocates a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine dispute. Given the establishment of a sovereign Palestine on territories overrun by Israel during the Six-Day War, and a just resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue, the Plan promises full normalization of relations between the Muslim world and Israel.
In
September 2021 King Salman addressed the UN General Assembly. In his speech he reiterated Saudi Arabia’s
commitment to the 2002 Plan, completely disregarding the fact that the one-time
Arab consensus – no normalization with Israel before a Palestinian state – had
been breached. Four Arab states had
ignored it. A precedent had been set.
Yet Saudi Arabia has
remained consistent. MBS and other Saudi
spokespeople, have recently repeated that normalization with Israel would not
be possible until the Israel-Palestine situation is resolved or at least, in a phrase
increasingly being used, “progress has been made” in resolving the dispute.
In a TV interview on January 19, Prince Faisal bin Farhan al Saud, Saudi’s foreign minister, once again repeated the traditional Saudi stance.
“We have said
consistently that we believe normalization with Israel is something that is very
much in the interest of the region,” he said. “However, true normalization and
true stability will only come through giving the Palestinians hope, through
giving the Palestinians dignity. That requires giving the
Palestinians a state, and that’s the priority.”
The same message emerged
from the recent Arab League summit. A
closing statement issued on May 19 reaffirmed that the Palestinian cause remains
the central issue for Arab nations and a key factor for regional stability. That must have disappointed Netanyahu, who
had spoken by phone with MBS before the conference to discuss the possibility
of normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia. He and MBS spoke to each
other again after the meeting, and the issue, still unresolved, remains on the
table.
A major difficulty with the
League’s position is in defining what precisely is “the Palestinian
cause”. For twenty years the Arab
League, led by Saudi Arabia, has maintained that the two-state solution, as set
out in the Arab Peace Initiative, must be a prerequisite for normalization with
Israel. But what is rarely taken sufficiently
into account is how the Palestinian leadership as a whole views the two-state
solution.
In the world of
Palestinian politics, paying lip-service to a two-state solution is understood
to be only a tactic, a stepping stone. The true Palestinian cause, right across
the political spectrum, is to gain control of the whole of Mandate Palestine,
“from the river to the sea.” Moderates and extremists differ only on
what tactics are acceptable to achieve the objective. Hamas rejects the very idea of a two-state
solution. It came into being to destroy
Israel.
The original Arab Peace Initiative,
of course, was drafted well before Hamas gained control of Gaza in 2007. The situation today is radically different
from what it was in 2002. The Palestinian people are now split. The proportion supporting
the Hamas agenda – perhaps up to half the Palestinian population both within
and outside the Gaza Strip – would never subscribe to a two-state
solution. Hamas regards Israel as interlopers on Palestinian land, and aims
to overthrow it.
World opinion, including
Saudi Arabia, that supports the two-state solution needs to face up to some awkward
truths. In order to achieve it, any Palestinian
leader agreeing to endorse Israel’s right to exist would require substantial
support from within the Arab world. In
addition truly tough sanctions would need to be in place against extremist
bodies like Hamas who would be bound to oppose it.
The conclusion? The two-state solution is a non-starter until
a substantial element within the
Palestinian leadership acknowledges that the State of Israel is here to stay
and endorses its legitimacy. Since Saudi
Arabia and the Arab world believe in the two-state solution, the ball is in their
court. Only they can bring the more
moderate Palestinian leadership to the negotiating table and circumvent or disempower
rejectionists like Hamas.
If that is too great an ask, then Saudi Arabia will need to consider aligning its position with that of other Abraham Accord signatories. All maintain their support for Palestinian aspirations, but not at the expense of their self interests. They have decided to prioritize the substantial benefits to their countries and the region of normalizing relations with Israel – and evidence of those benefits grows stronger day by day.
Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 1 July 2023https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-748248
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