New Delhi: Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud said earlier this week that his country would not “normalise” ties with Israel without a “credible, irreversible” path to the Palestinian state. The remarks come as Tel Aviv’s continued attacks in the Gaza Strip threaten to upset the lately growing ties between Arab countries and Israel.
“In order for the region [West Asia] to see true peace, to see stability and to see real integration that delivers economic and social benefits for all of us, including Israel, [the path] is through peace, [and] through a credible, irreversible process to a Palestinian state,” Al-Saud said in an interview to CNN on the sidelines of the five-day World Economic Forum meeting in Davos.
The interview was aired on 21 January, two days after the Davos conference ended.
Condemning Israel’s attacks as “completely unnecessary” and “unacceptable”, Al-Saud said what was being witnessed currently “is the Israelis are crushing Gaza, the civilian population of Gaza”.
When asked by the interviewer, Fareed Zakaria, whether there could be no normalisation of ties without a path to a “credible and irreversible” Palestinian state, the Saudi foreign minister said: “That is the only way we’re going to benefit. So, yes, we need stability and only stability will come through resolving the Palestinian issue”.
He said that all Arab nations — not just Saudi Arabia — would engage in a conversation for a Palestinian state, adding that while he hoped Israelis would be a part of the conversation, it was up to them to “make that decision”.
The remarks come at a time when Israel’s offensive in Gaza is in its third month. The offensive, which began as retaliation against the Palestinian militant group Hamas’s aerial and ground infiltration of Israel on 7 October — which saw around 1,200 people being killed— has graduated to a full-fledged ground invasion of north, south, and central Gaza and is estimated to have killed 25,000 people, according to the Gaza health ministry.
How Gaza war threatens Arab-Israel ties
The last few years have seen an improvement in the relationship between the Arab world and Israel after decades of wars and conflict over the Palestinian question. However, Tel Aviv’s continued offensive threatens to sour these ties and scuttle one of the most hard-won geo-political battles in the last few decades — the Abraham Accords.
Brokered by the US’s Trump administration, the Abraham Accords are a series of agreements signed by Israel with four Arab nations — the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Morocco, Bahrain, and Sudan — between September 2020 and January 2021.
Although Saudi Arabia isn’t part of the accords, the US administration’s efforts at brokering peace and normalisation in the Middle East have meant that the two countries had been holding official talks and had even hosted ministerial delegations.
According to The Washington Post, a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel has several benefits. For Saudi Arabia, it could mean diversifying its economy beyond oil, the article, published on 22 September, 2023 — a fortnight before the Hamas attack — said. For the US, which is one of Israel’s closest allies, it could help “regain some of its influence over Saudi Arabia” and counter Iran — considered an arch-adversary of both Riyadh and Washington — it said.
Meanwhile, even as Tel Aviv’s attack continues, efforts continue in the US to further the ties between the Arab world and Israel. According to a report in NBC News on 18 January, Senator Lindsey Graham held a series of meetings with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman earlier in the month to “hammer out a framework for concluding the Israel-Hamas war, stabilising the Middle East and paving the way for some form of Palestinian self-governance in the Gaza Strip”.
It’s one of the several meetings that American lawmakers and diplomats have held with Saudi officials to revive talks of a potential treaty between Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the US, the report said.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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Whether recent events could have been avoided if this principled stand had been taken at the time of the Abraham Accords. Fair to both sides.