Jacob Magid is the American correspondent for The Times of Israel in New York.
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Joe Biden departed Friday afternoon on a U. S. president’s first direct flight from Israel to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, hours after Riyadh announced it would begin allowing Israeli jets to use its airspace as part of a deal. Negotiated through Washington, which is expected to be announced later in the weekend.
He left Ben Gurion Airport after a brief farewell assembly with Prime Minister Yair Lapid, President Isaac Herzog and dignitaries at the foot of the steps of Air Force One.
In brief comments without delay after Biden’s departure, Lapid enigmatically said Biden’s Wednesday-Friday visit to Israel also included “accomplishments that will take years before we can communicate about it. “
He said the Saudi resolution to open its airspace to Israeli flights is “an official first step” in a broader diplomatic normalization procedure with the Jewish state. “I thank the Saudi leaders for opening up Saudi airspace. “
The one-and-a-half-day Saudi part of Biden’s first visit to the Middle East as president, which followed two days in Israel and the West Bank, has attracted a lot of attention because of the obvious shift in attitude he represents in the administration’s policy toward Riyadh, after he first pledged to take a much harder line because of the kingdom’s human rights record.
But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted Washington to shift its foreign policy priorities, as well as encouraging Saudi Arabia to extract more oil to reduce U. S. fuel costs and lessen Europe’s dependence on Russian crude.
Biden, after an initial hesitation to adopt the Abraham Accord normalization agreements that Trump’s management negotiated between Israel and several Arab states in 2020, gave it his all and described the advancement of Israel’s integration into the region as a key purpose for the Middle East tour. .
The efforts paid off on Thursday, when Saudi Arabia announced it would allow all civilian aircraft, including Israeli ones, to use its airspace.
– Ambassador Tom Nides (@USAmbIsrael) July 15, 2022
As a result, Israel’s approval was mandatory for the move of the Egyptian island to the Saudi island to take place, and Biden’s management took advantage of the mandatory green courtesy to pressure Riyadh to take steps toward normalization with the Jewish state.
The deal will also allow direct charter flights between Israel and Saudi Arabia for Muslim pilgrims, the Middle East diplomat said. conflict.
Saudi ties with the Palestinians have cooled in recent years, largely due to a frigid relationship between Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Riyadh reportedly rejected several requests from Abbas’s workplace to make a stopover in the Gulf kingdom before Biden’s. in a supposed last-minute effort to convince Saudi Arabia not to move toward normalization with Israel. Riyadh settled for a phone call between Abbas and king Salman, 86, more historically pro-Palestinian.
The 36-year-old crown prince is seen as most eliminated from the Palestinian cause, going so far as to say in March that Israel could be just a “potential ally. “
For now, however, King Salman appears to have a veto on full normalization with Israel.
However, Israel has aggressively emphasized Biden to Saudi Arabia, identifying the opportunity to move toward normalization while seeing repaired U. S. -Saudi relations as a national interest to better combat Iran.
For many, this has been a difficult tablet to swallow, given Biden’s cross-promise to turn Saudi Arabia into a “pariah” in what the CIA discovered was the crown prince’s authorization for the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
Biden insisted Thursday in Israel that his position on Khashoggi’s killing had changed and that he would raise the issue of human rights with the Saudis.
The president is scheduled to hold a bilateral meeting with King Salman and his team shortly after arriving in Jeddah, and then go down with the crown prince and his aides, at a highly anticipated rally where the US media has paid close attention. whether Biden will tremble. Bin Salman’s hand.
Israeli ministers were informed that the president would only hit because of COVID precautions, however, Biden broke protocol and was noted to shake his hand during his time in Israel, making it harder to describe a resolution not to do so with MBS as something less than a snub.
On Saturday, Biden will attend an expanded Gulf Cooperation Council summit known as GCC 3, which will bring together the leaders of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Egypt, Jordan and Iraq.
He will then hold separate bilateral meetings with the leaders of Iraq, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates before flying to the United States on Saturday night.
Addressing Biden’s plan to Saudi Arabia on Thursday, Prime Minister Yair Lapid asked the president to send a “message of peace” from Jerusalem.
“Our hand extends for peace. We are in a position to share our generation and experience, in a position for our other people to come together and inform each other, in a position for our scientists to collaborate and for our companies to cooperate. “”He said at a news conference alongside Biden.
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