Riyadh To Normalize Ties With Israel After Gaza War: Saudi Envoy

Prince Khalid bin Bandar Al Sultan made the remarks in an interview with the BBC, claiming that the two countries were on the verge of an agreement before the seventh of October war; and despite the Undesirable Number of casualties in Gaza, Saudi Arabia still believes in establishing relations with Israel, but this should not be at the expense of the people of Palestine and needs to think about integrating Hamas into the future government of Palestine; so, one of these two (Palestine and Israel) will not be without the other. The order and method of managing it is what needs to be negotiated.

It should be noted that the so-called normalization talks between Saudi Arabia and the Israeli regime were suspended by the Saudis seven days after the onset of the Gaza war on October 14, 2023.

The so-called normalization talks between the Israeli regime and Arab countries began after the Abraham Accords were proposed by the then US President Donald Trump’s administration in 2020. These agreements led to the normalization of relations between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain with the Israeli regime after several months of negotiations, and then Morocco and Sudan joined this process. However, Saudi Arabia avoided announcing a normalization agreement with Israel for various reasons. Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, traveled to Riyadh yesterday to resume these talks, but Mohammed bin Salman’s response to this media request has not been announced.

Saudi officials have previously stated that they are seeking peace and the formation of a country for the Palestinians in these negotiations. They initially said that normalizing relations with the Israeli regime was impossible without the formation of a Palestinian state, but Khalid bin Bandar speaks of reducing this condition to determining a roadmap and practical strategy for its formation and solving Hamas in Palestine or in other words, removing Hamas. Overall, the Saudis are trying to squeeze concession from the Israeli reimage by using the Palestinian card, and it remains to be seen how far their pressure against the United States and the regime will continue and what the Saudis will trade for the Palestinian cause!