Saudi king reassures allies
‘Any Middle East peace plan must include Jerusalem’
riYADH: Saudi Arabia has reassured Arab allies it will not endorse any Middle East peace plan that fails to address Jerusalem’s status or refugees’ right of return, easing their concerns that the kingdom might back a nascent US deal which aligns with Israel on key issues.
King Salman’s private guarantees to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his public defence of long-standing Arab positions in recent months have helped reverse perceptions that Saudi Arabia’s stance was changing under his powerful young son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, diplomats and analysts said.
This in turn has called into question whether Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and site of its holiest shrines, can rally Arab support for a new push to end the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, with an eye to closing ranks against mutual enemy Iran.
“In Saudi Arabia, the king is the one who decides on this issue now, not the crown prince,” said a senior Arab diplomat in Riyadh.
“The United States’ mistake was that they thought one country could pressure the rest to give in, but it’s not about pressure. No Arab leader can concede on Jerusalem or Palestine.”
Palestinian officials said in December that Prince Mohammed, known as MbS, had pressed Abbas to support the US plan despite concerns that it offered the Palestinians limited self-government inside disconnected patches of the occupied West Bank, with no right of return for refugees displaced by the ArabIsraeli wars of 1948 and 1967.
Such a plan would diverge from the Arab Peace Initiative drawn up
In Saudi Arabia, the king is the one who decides on this issue now, not the crown prince. Senior Arab diplomat
by Saudi Arabia in 2002, in which Arab nations offered Israel normal ties in return for a statehood deal with the Palestinians and full Israeli withdrawal from territory captured in 1967.
Saudi officials have denied any difference between King Salman, who has vocally supported that initiative, and MbS, who has shaken up long-held policies on many issues and told a US magazine in April that Israelis are entitled to live peacefully on their own land – a rare statement for an Arab leader.
The Palestinian ambassador to Riyadh, Basem Al-Agha, said King Salman had expressed support for Palestinians in a recent meeting with Abbas, saying: “We will not abandon you ... We accept what you accept and we reject what you reject.”
He said that King Salman naming the 2018 Arab League conference “The Jerusalem Summit” and announcing US$200mil (RM811mil) in aid for Palestinians were messages that Jerusalem and refugees were back on the table.
Diplomats in the region say Washington’s current thinking – conveyed during a tour last month by top White House officials – does not include Arab East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state, a right of return for refugees or a freeze of Israeli settlements in lands claimed by the Palestinians.
Senior adviser Jared Kushner,
President Donald Trump’s son-in
law, has not provided concrete details of the US strategy more than 18 months after he was tasked with forging peace.
Independent analyst Neil Partrick said King Salman appears to have reined in MbS’ “politically reckless approach” because of Jerusalem’s importance to Muslims.
“So MbS won’t oppose Kushner’s ‘deal’, but neither will he do much to encourage its one-sided political simplicities any longer,” said Partrick, lead contributor and editor of Saudi Arabian Foreign Policy: Conflict and Cooperation. Kushner and fellow negotiator Jason Greenblatt have not presented a full proposal but rather disjointed elements, which one diplomat said “crossed too many red lines”. “The problem is there is no cohesive plan presented to all countries,” said the senior Arab diplomat in Riyadh. “Nobody sees what everyone else is being offered.” —