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Israel’s Tourism Minister visited Saudi Arabia and a Saudi envoy visited the Israeli-occupied West Bank. These are a testament to how the two countries are moving towards normalizing relations.
By Patrick Kingsley
Reporting from Jerusalem
Parallel visits this week by an Israeli minister to Saudi Arabia and a Saudi envoy to the Israeli-occupied West Bank have highlighted the increasingly warm ties between the Jewish state and the hardcore Arab country.
In the first public visit by an Israeli minister to the Arab kingdom, Haim Katz, Israel’s tourism minister, attended a multilateral tourism convention in Riyadh hosted by the United Nations on Tuesday and Wednesday.
At the same time, the Saudi ambassador to the Palestinians, Naif al-Sudairi, crossed an Israeli border checkpoint into the West Bank, where he met with leaders of the Palestinian Authority, the organization that administers only 40% of Israeli-controlled territory.
Experts claimed that Mr. Sudairi’s stopover, founded in neighboring Jordan, was the first known stop through a Saudi official in the region since Israel took it from Jordan during the 1967 war between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
Inconceivable for most of Israel’s history, the two visits symbolize how Israel and Saudi Arabia are preparing the ground to formalize their relationship, amid growing U. S. efforts to broker a deal between the two countries.
“You see things that we couldn’t even believe years ago,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.
Saudi Arabia has never identified the Jewish state since its status quo in 1948, preferring that, like most Arab countries, it isolates Israel until it accepts the creation of a Palestinian state.
Today, its leaders indicated they are contemplating detecting Israel despite a nearly decade-long pause in peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
Shared fears about Iran, along with a mutual preference for greater industrial ties and military cooperation, helped broker three diplomatic deals, negotiated in 2020 through the Trump administration, between Israel and three Arab states.
Three years later, Biden’s leadership is seeking to broker an even bigger deal between Israel and the Saudis, a deeply symbolic shift that experts say would pave the way for the rest of the Muslim world to follow suit.
Discussions about normalization are “for the first time real,” Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and de facto ruler, said in an interview last week with Fox News.
“Every day we get closer,” the prince added.
In exchange for normalization, Riyadh needs the United States and Israel to create a civilian nuclear program on Saudi soil and seek a superior military from Washington.
The Saudis also need Israel to grant concessions to the Palestinians; diplomats say it is not yet clear exactly what Riyadh will ask for.
During his visit to the Palestinian Authority on Tuesday, Sudairi, the ambassador, said the Arab Peace Initiative — a Saudi-sponsored proposal dating back to 2002 that calls for the creation of a Palestinian state — remains “the cornerstone of any long-term agreement. “»
But Prince Mohammed left more room for manoeuvre to his assembly last week. He said any deal deserves to “make life less difficult for the Palestinians,” a looser formula that analysts say may simply refer to increased monetary aid to the Palestinian Authority, rather than complete sovereignty. .
Any proposal for a Saudi nuclear program would face resistance from some U. S. and Israeli politicians and officials who fear Saudi Arabia could at some point use that generation to create a nuclear bomb.
Similarly, any concessions to the Palestinians would cause anger within Israel’s ruling coalition, which is the most fiercely nationalist in Israel’s history. But the Saudi government risks angering its own citizens, as well as the Muslim world as a whole, if it normalizes relations. with Israel they narrowly gain advantages for the Palestinians.
The delicate scenario was reflected in Mr. Sudairi on Wednesday canceling a stopover at the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, a holy site for Jews and Muslims, run and monitored through Israel. Visiting the site under Israeli escort risked giving implicit popularity to Israelis. of the site.
Separately, the U. S. government announced Wednesday that starting in November Israelis would be allowed to enter the United States without a visa. This resolution, which has been under negotiation for years, is partly the result of Israel’s recent resolution to allow American citizens of Palestinian origin – with the exception of several hundred living in the Gaza Strip – to enter Israel without a visa.
The move, which received a warm welcome in Israel, is one of many measures taken during Biden’s tenure that have eased tensions with Netanyahu.
U. S. officials, adding that President Biden himself, have expressed frustration with Netanyahu facing his questionable efforts to restrict the strength of Israel’s Supreme Court and its strengthening of Israel in the West Bank.
But the visa waiver resolution, along with Saudi mediation and Biden’s resolution last week that invited Netanyahu to the White House, underscored how the basic contours of the U. S. -Israel partnership remain unchanged, despite disagreements between the two leaders.
Gabby Sobelman contributed from Rehovot, Israel.
Patrick Kingsley is the head of the Jerusalem office, which covers Israel and the occupied territories. He has reported from more than 40 countries, written two books and in the past covered migration and the Middle East for The Guardian. Learn more about Patrick Kingsley
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