How close is Saudi Arabia to normalization with Israel?

• Published date: 30 September 2021
• Author: NEVILLE TELLER
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Then-Mossad director Yossi Cohen, speaking a week before the US presidential election, said that if Donald Trump won, there could be an almost immediate announcement, but that an administration of Joe Biden may want to link Israeli-Saudi normalization to progress in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Read More...

In the event, Cohen's prediction was stood on its head. It was not US President Joe Biden who began linking normalization deals to solving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, but Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.

Then came the Israeli election of March 23, which proved something of a catalyst. By then the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain had been joined by Sudan and Morocco in normalization deals with Israel, while Oman's foreign minister, Badr al-Busaidi, had placed his country firmly on the sidelines. On February 11, he stated that Oman was satisfied for the time being with its relations with Israel, adding that the country was: "committed to peace between Israel and the Palestinians based on a two-state solution."

In the run-up to Israel's election, then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had boasted that four more countries were close to establishing diplomatic relations with Israel. He did not specify them, but in a radio interview later that day, then-intelligence minister Eli Cohen named them as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, and Niger (as yet none has signed up to the Abraham Accords).

Top officials from Saudi Arabia and Qatar instantly denied that they were considering normalization, while Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir declared that his country would not establish formal ties with Israel until an agreement with the Palestinians had been found.

This position was strengthened one day before Israel went to the polls. Nawaf Obaid, a former senior adviser to the Saudi Arabian government, said in an editorial published in the Palestinian Al Quds newspaper that the kingdom would not normalize ties with Israel until there was a peace agreement establishing an independent Palestinian state. Obaid claimed to be citing the views of the kingdom's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS).

This official Saudi position was reaffirmed as recently as August 3 at the Aspen Security Forum, an annual US-based conference at which global leaders discuss the most pressing foreign policy and security issues of the day. The 2021 occasion was a virtual event, and was attended by Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan.

On...