Hyderabad: United States President Donald Trump has called for normalisation of Saudi Arabia-Israel ties; however, it is unlikely to happen when Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman visits the White House on November 18.
According to a report by Reuters, the establishment of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel would help strengthen the US influence in the Middle East. It is likely to shake up the political and security landscape in the Middle East.
In October, Trump opined that the Kingdom would normalise relations with Israel. However, Saudi Arabia has signalled to the US that it has not changed its stance towards Israel. Saudi Arabia maintains that it will not normalise relations with Israel until there is a solution for Palestinian statehood.
MbS is likely to try to use his influence with Trump to seek “more explicit and vocal buy-in for the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state,” said Panikoff, who is now at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington.
Trump’s comments on 2020 Abraham Accords
The November 18 visit will be Mohammed bin Salman’s first to Washington since the 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, an MbS critic whose murder in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul caused global outrage. MbS denied direct involvement.
“We have a lot of people joining now the Abraham Accords, and hopefully we’re going to get Saudi Arabia very soon,” Trump said on November 5, without offering a timeline.
In an interview on October 17, the US President said, “I hope to see Saudi Arabia go in, and I hope to see others go in. I think when Saudi Arabia goes in, everybody goes in.”
But the agreement signed by the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco sidestepped the issue of Palestinian statehood. Riyadh had signalled to Washington that any move to recognise Israel must be part of a new framework, not just an extension of any deal.
For Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and custodian of its two holiest sites, Makkah and Madina, recognising Israel would be more than just a diplomatic milestone. It is a deeply sensitive national security issue tied to resolving one of the region’s oldest and most intractable conflicts.
Such a step would be difficult to take when Arab public’s mistrust of Israel remains high over the scale of its military offensive during the war against the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza, despite a fragile ceasefire in the conflict that followed the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
Saudi foreign minister official, Manal Radwan has called for a clear, time-bound Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, the deployment of an international protection force and the empowerment and return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza.
These steps, she said, are essential to the establishment of a Palestinian state, the prerequisite for regional integration and the implementation of the two-state solution.
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