US key to concessions to Palestinians in Israel-Saudi normalisation deal

President Joe Biden has considerable leverage over the Israeli Prime Minister, a former US envoy to the Palestinian-Israeli talks says

Martin Indyk is a former US special envoy for Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. The National

Saudi Arabia will not hold back on establishing ties with Israel purely for the sake of making progress towards the creation of a Palestinian state and the US may be key to any concessions in that vein, Martin Indyk, former US special envoy for Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, said this week.

Mr Indyk, who served as special envoy between 2013-2014, said President Joe Biden should be the one to urge Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to offer significant concessions towards Palestinians as part of a Saudi-Israeli pact.

“I think, just like the case of every other Arab state, Saudi Arabia is not going to hold up its deal for the sake of the Palestinian national cause,” Mr Indyk said during a two-day conference on the failures of the Oslo Peace process, hosted by the Middle East Institute in Washington.

“So it comes down to what the United States will do or should do."

The US is trying to broker a landmark diplomatic deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel to establish formal ties under an extension of the Abraham Accords.

The UAE and Bahrain signed deals with Israel in 2020, followed by Morocco and Sudan.

The deals were not conditioned on any significant progress towards a return to the peace process with the Palestinians.

In 2002, Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, endorsed the Arab Peace Initiative, pledging not to create diplomatic ties with Israel without a just solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Egypt was the first country to make peace with Israel in 1979, followed by Jordan in 1994.

In a recent televised interview with Fox News, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman talked about “easing the lives of Palestinians”.

But “this is not a condition for full normalisation with Saudi Arabia”, Mr Indyk said.

The Crown Prince also denied reports that Riyadh was putting talks on hold because Israel’s right-wing government was unwilling to offer any concessions to the Palestinians.

Saudi Arabia is reported to be considering ties with Israel as part of a US-brokered grand bargain that would include a US defence pact and a civilian nuclear programme.

“The United States is not only the midwife of this deal, but has considerable leverage for its requirements,” Mr Indyk said.

For the pact to go through, not only would the two main sides have to agree, it would need to be approved by the US Senate, where Mr Biden's Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents hold a slim 51-49 majority.

Mr Biden would need 67 votes to get the deal passed, which will be a tough sell, given bipartisan concerns over human rights in Saudi Arabia.

Several Democratic members of Congress will demand significant concessions towards the Palestinians, Mr Indyk predicted.

Further complicating any Saudi-Israeli deal is the current make-up of Mr Netanyahu's government, which includes ministers who have openly said that they want to pursue full annexation of the West Bank, territory set aside for an eventual Palestinian state.

A deal that does not require Israel to stop settlement expansion or annexation plans could be seen as a green light and reignite violence in the occupied West Bank, where tension is already high.

Israel's “plan is very clear and if it is given a turbo boost by an Israeli-Saudi peace deal, which does not stop their plans for annexation of the West Bank, then the whole notion of an American commitment to a two-state solution goes completely out the window”, Mr Indyk said.