Salman stands by Palestinians

The US mistake was 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

A senior Arab diplomat

riyadh — Saudi Arabia has reassured Arab allies it will not endorse any Middle East peace plan that fails to address Occupied 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.

Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz’s private guarantees to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his public defence of longstanding Arab positions in recent months have helped reverse perceptions that Saudi Arabia’s stance was changing.

This in turn has called into question whether Saudi Arabia 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,” said a senior Arab diplomat in Riyadh. “The US mistake was 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.”

The Palestinian ambassador to Riyadh, Basem Al Agha, said that 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 $200 million in aid for Palestinians were messages that Jerusalem and refugees were back on the table. The Saudi authorities did not respond to a request for comment on the current status of diplomatic efforts.

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, US President Donald Trump’s son-inlaw, has not provided concrete details of the US strategy more than 18 months after he was tasked with forging peace.

Kushner and fellow negotiator Jason Greenblatt have not presented

a comprehensive proposal but rather disjointed elements, which one diplomat said “crossed too many red lines”.

Instead, they heavily focused on the idea of setting up an economic zone in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula with the adjacent Gaza Strip possibly coming under the control of Cairo, which Arab diplomats described as unacceptable.

“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.”

Kushner, a 37-year-old real estate developer with little experience of international diplomacy or political negotiation, visited Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and Israel in June. He did not meet Abbas, who has refused to see Trump’s team after the US embassy was moved to Occupied Jerusalem.

In an interview at the end of his trip, Kushner said Washington would announce its Middle East peace plan soon, and press on with or without Abbas. Yet there has been little to suggest any significant progress towards ending the decades-old conflict, which Trump has said would be “the ultimate deal”. “There is no new push. Nothing Kushner presented is acceptable to any of the Arab countries,” the Arab diplomat said. —