You could be forgiven for thinking that Saudi Arabia is about to strike a deal with Israel leading to the normalisation of relations between them.  That’s the impression given recently by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia and by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In an interview with Fox News on 20 September 2023, the Crown Prince said that “every day we get closer” to normalisation with Israel.

And in his address to the UN General Assembly on 22 September 2023, Prime Minister Netanyahu declared:

“The Abraham accords heralded the dawn of a new age of peace. But I believe that we are at the cusp of an even more dramatic breakthrough – an historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Such a peace will go a long way to ending the Arab Israeli conflict. It will encourage other Arab states to normalize their relations with Israel. It will enhance the prospects of peace with the Palestinians.”

Arab Peace Initiative

In his UN speech, Prime Minister Netanyahu didn’t mention that an historic breakthrough of this kind has been available to Israel since 2002, when Saudi Arabia proposed the Arab Peace Initiative, which was endorsed unanimously by the Arab League at its Beirut summit in March 2002.  This offered the normalisation of relations between the Arab world and Israel in exchange for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with its capital and East Jerusalem, plus a solution to the Palestine refugee problem.  

The essential elements of it are as follows:

Emanating from the conviction of the Arab countries that a military solution to the conflict will not achieve peace or provide security for the parties, the council:

1. Requests Israel to reconsider its policies and declare that a just peace is its strategic option as well.

2. Further calls upon Israel to affirm:

a. Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights to the lines of June 4, 1967 as well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon.

b. Achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194.

c. The acceptance of the establishment of a Sovereign Independent Palestinian State on the Palestinian territories occupied since the 4th of June 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza strip, with east Jerusalem as its capital.

3. Consequently, the Arab countries affirm the following:

a. Consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended, and enter into a peace agreement with Israel, and provide security for all the states of the region.

b. Establish normal relations with Israel in the context of this comprehensive peace. ..

5. Calls upon the government of Israel and all Israelis to accept this initiative in order to safeguard the prospects for peace and stop the further shedding of blood, enabling the Arab Countries and Israel to live in peace and good neighborliness and provide future generations with security, stability, and prosperity.

Having being adopted unanimously by the Arab League in 2002, the Initiative was re-adopted in 2007 and again in 2017.  It was also endorsed by the 57 Muslim states of the Organisation of the Islamic Co-operation (OIC), including Iran.  Had Israel been prepared to accept its terms, normalisation of relations with the whole Muslim world was a possibility.

Abraham Accords

Benyamin Netanyahu has been the Prime Minister of Israel since 2009, apart from eighteen months in 2021-22.  In all that time, he made no attempt to seek normalisation of relations with the Arab world via the Arab Peace Initiative.  He was not prepared pay the price which was ending the occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state.

Now, thanks to President Trump, Israel has hopes that it can have normalisation of relations with the Arab world without paying that price.  In the so-called Abraham Accords, three Arab states – Bahrain, Morocco and UAE – have been persuaded by the US to normalise relations with Israel while its occupation of Palestinian land continues unabated.  To pressure Morocco into ratting on the Palestinians, the Trump administration recognised Morocco’s long-standing claim to Western Sahara, having refused to do so in the past, and to persuade the UAE to do likewise, it was promised that it could buy F-35 fighters from the US, though as yet no deal has been finalised.

In his speech to the UN, Netanyahu listed Sudan as a fourth Arab state that had normalised relations with Israel.  To persuade Sudan to sign up, President Trump had to remove it from a US government list of terrorist-promoting states and provide it with a $1 billion bridging loan so that it could clear its arrears to the World Bank.  At one point back in late 2020, the then government in Sudan said that a final decision on normalisation with Israel would rest with an elected parliament, which has yet to materialise, so the precise status on the issue today is unclear (Reuters, 7 January 2021).  

A few weeks ago, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen met his Libyan counterpart in Rome to discuss normalisation.  News of the meeting made public by Cohen himself provoked riots in Tripoli two nights running and the Libyan foreign minister fled the country in fear of her life.

Netanyahu says NO to ceding sovereignty

The Biden administration has taken up Trump’s Abraham Accords initiative with enthusiasm.  It is now actively engaged in negotiations with Saudi Arabia and Israel about normalisation, which if successful would likely be a catalyst for other Arab states to follow suit.  That would provide Biden (and Netanyahu) with a major foreign policy success and upstage China’s diplomatic activities in the region.

On the face of it, success in impossible at the moment unless Saudi Arabia reneges on the principle that normalisation must be preceded by the creation of a Palestinian state – since it’s impossible to believe that Netanyahu will agree to the creation of a Palestinian state.

Here are some of his statements over the years in opposition to Israel ceding sovereignty over any of the territory it presently holds.  He has made a habit of stating this principle unequivocally prior to every election.  For example, prior the February 2009 election (as a result of which he became Prime Minister for the second time), he told supporters in Beit Aryeh, a small settlement in the West Bank:

“The election on Tuesday will be about one issue – whether this place will remain in our hands or will be handed over to Hamas and Iran.  We will not withdraw from one inch. Every inch we leave would go to Iran.”   (Al Jazeera, 26 March 2009)

And on the eve of the election in March 2015, he had a similar message for the electorate (Netanyahu: If I’m elected, there will be no Palestinian state, Haaretz, 16 March 2015).  Any handover to Palestinians of territory on the West Bank would, he asserted, threaten Israel’s security:

“I think that anyone who moves to establish a Palestinian state and evacuate territory gives territory away to radical Islamist attacks against Israel. The left has buried its head in the sand time and after time and ignores this, but we are realistic and understand.”

Asked if that meant there would be no Palestinian state during his tenure of office, he replied: “Indeed.” (Binyamin Netanyahu rules out Palestinian state if he wins, Guardian, 16 March 2015).

On 28 August 2017, at an event in the Barkan settlement to celebrate 50 years of Israeli occupation and colonisation of the West Bank, thousands cheered Prime Minister Netanyahu as he restated his determination that Israel will hold on to the West Bank permanently.  Here’s an extract from his speech:

“We are here to stay forever. There will be no more uprooting of settlements in the land of Israel. …  This is the inheritance of our ancestors. This is our land.

“Imagine that on these hills were the forces of radical Islam. It would endanger us, it would endanger you, and it would endanger the entire Middle East.” (Times of Israel, 28 August 2017)

In the days before the 2019 election campaign, yet again made his opposition to a Palestinian state abundantly clear:

“There will be no Palestinian state, not as people talk about it. It will not be because I am making sure of it. I am not uprooting settlements, rather applying sovereignty to them. I am maintaining a united Jerusalem and I am maintaining our control on the entire area west of the Jordan River to prevent another Gaza. This is my policy.” (Arutz Sheva, 7 April 2019)

1999 Likud platform

This Netanyahu stance isn’t surprising, since it is consistent with the 1999 Likud platform, which

•  rejects the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, and
•  supports unlimited Jewish colonisation of the West Bank (referred to as Judea and Samaria by Israel).

Here are the relevant points from the platform:

a. “The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.”

b. “The Jordan Valley and the territories that dominate it shall be under Israeli sovereignty.  The Jordan river will be the permanent eastern border of the State of Israel.”

c. “Jerusalem is the eternal, united capital of the State of Israel and only of Israel. The government will flatly reject Palestinian proposals to divide Jerusalem”

d. “The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting.”

This Likud platform may be over twenty years old, but the principles enshrined in it have never been repudiated by Likud.

It’s impossible to believe that the present leader of Likud, would agree to the creation of a Palestinian state.  Needless to say, he didn’t mention a Palestinian state in his UN speech.  In it, he offered nothing to Palestinians, dismissing them as a mere 2% of the total Arab population who must not have a veto over new peace treaties with Arab states and be in a position to abort his plans for reconciliation between Jews and Arabs in the Middle East.

Just easing the life of Palestinians

It will be up to the Crown Prince to determine if the creation of a Palestinian state must precede normalisation with Israel.  What has he said about this recently?  In his Fox News interview, he was asked:

• “What would it take for you to agree to normalise relations with Israel?”, and 

• “What concessions would Israel have to make to Palestinians?”

In neither case did he respond by saying “the creation of a Palestinian state”.  To (a), he replied:

“For us, the Palestinian issue is very important.  We need to solve that part. We got to see where we go.  We hope that will reach a place that will ease the life of the Palestinians, get Israel as a player in the Middle East.”

To (b), he said that’s a matter for negotiations.

However, speaking at the UN General Assembly on 23 September 2023, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said:

“Security in the Middle East region requires the acceleration of a just, comprehensive solution to the Palestinian issue; the solution must be based on resolutions in the international arena and must bring about a peace that allows [the] Palestinian people to have an independent state based on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.”

However, he didn’t say that Saudi normalisation with Israel was conditional on this state coming into being.  He didn’t mention normalisation with Israel.

So, what is Saudi Arabia’s position?  Is it going to renege on the principle enshrined in the Arab Peace Initiative that normalisation with Israel must be preceded by the creation of a Palestinian state?  It looks likely.

As I write this, for the first time since the Israeli occupation of the West Bank began in 1967 Saudi representatives are in the West Bank for talks with Palestinians.  There would be no need for such an unprecedented visit if the Saudi position was that normalisation with Israel must be preceded by the creation of a Palestinian state.  However, if the Saudi position is, in the Crown Prince’s words, merely “to ease the life of the Palestinians” under continued occupation, then it would be appropriate for a Saudi delegation to be in Ramallah to discuss the details.

No doubt, the bitter pill will be sweetened by a large influx of funds, and the promise of continuing funds, from Saudi Arabia to the Palestinian Authority.  

David Morrison

27 September 2023