Saudi crown prince says Israel has ‘right’ to its land
SHIFTING POSITION? King Salman later reaffirms support for Palestinians
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s crown prince said Israelis are entitled to live peacefully on their own land in an interview published on Monday, another public sign of a thaw between Riyadh and Tel Aviv.
Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians has long proved an obstacle to a full rapprochement, as Riyadh still supports Palestinian claims to sovereignty.
But now Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — speaking to the editor-in-chief of the US news magazine The Atlantic — appeared to put the rival land claims on an equal footing.
The prince was asked whether the “Jewish people have a right to a nation-state in at least part of their ancestral homeland?”
“I believe that each people, anywhere, has a right to live in their peaceful nation,” said the prince, who is on a three-week US tour. “I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land,” he added.
“But we have to have a peace agreement to assure the stability for everyone and to have normal relations.”
Saudi Arabia and Israel still have no formal diplomatic relations, but behind the scenes, improvements in their ties have accelerated in recent years.
Both countries see Iran as their biggest outside threat and the United States as their key ally, and both see danger from armed Islamist extremists.
The prince also said that the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “makes Hitler look good”.
“He is the Hitler of the Middle East,” he said. “In the 1920s and 1930s, no one saw Hitler as a danger. Only a few people. Until it happened. We don’t want to see what happened in Europe happen in the Middle East.”
Since 2002, Saudi Arabia has been the main sponsor of the Arab Peace Initiative, which envisions a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But no such senior Saudi official is known to have previously accepted that Israel has a “right” to any land beyond the practical need to secure a lasting deal.
Later on Monday, King Salman reiterated Saudi Arabia’s support for a Palestinian state.
The king reaffirmed “the kingdom’s steadfast position towards the Palestinian issue and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people to an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital”, state news agency SPA said on Tuesday.