According to a report by The Atlantic, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has allegedly assured the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that he does not personally care about the “Palestinian issue.” However, he appreciates that it remains an issue that many people in Saudi Arabia are anxious about. In the high-level talks held between Washington and Riyadh earlier this year, both sides discussed normalizing Saudi-Israeli relations while the Gaza conflict continues.
The report states that Blinken had a conversation in January when he visited Saudi Arabia. In al-Ula, Blinken had met with the Crown Prince and discussed prospects for a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal, which had been progressing but was later disrupted by the breakout of the war in Gaza in October.
In case a deal comes into effect, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has preferred coolness in Gaza but declared his willingness to accept Israel’s periodical re-intrusions into the blockaded strip should this occur within specific restrictions.
At the same time, Mohammed bin Salman rapidly pointed out that even though the Palestinian question is not of personal interest, it remains vital for his people: “Seventy percent of my population is younger than me… they never really knew much about the Palestinian issue. It’s a huge problem. Do I care personally about the Palestinian issue? I don’t, but my people do, so I need to make sure this is meaningful,” he said, according to The Atlantic.
An official in Saudi Arabia has since dismissed the account as “incorrect.” In public, the Crown Prince has repeatedly stated that Saudi Arabia will not normalize relations with Israel unless and until there is a Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Speaking recently to the Shura Council in Riyadh, he repeated, “Saudi Arabia will not stop working to create an independent Palestinian state.”
Still, the report claims Saudi Arabia is looking for a mutual defense treaty with the US as part of a more extensive normalization package with Israel. This step would require the approval of the U.S. Senate, which the Crown Prince thought would be more likely under President Biden’s administration, especially if it should include creating a Palestinian state.
The report also suggests that negotiation for normalization may bear personal risks for the Crown Prince himself. He mentioned referring to the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who was assassinated in 1981 after signing a peace accord with Israel and said, “Half my advisers say the deal is not worth the risk. I could end up getting killed because of this deal.”
In Saudi Arabia, where public opinion is mostly against ties with Israel-polls showed more than 90 percent of Saudis favored severing Arab relations with Israel over Gaza. The government has cracked down on public expressions of Palestinian solidarity, detaining some for wearing Palestinian symbols or voicing opinions on social media.
Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi ambassador and a high-ranking member of the Saudi royal family, said recently that he has read “full support for Palestine” in the Saudi media. And he dismissed speculation that the recent Hamas attack on southern Israel was a plot to scuttle the normalization talks. “For Hamas to have done what it did, it would have required time to prepare for it,” he said.
