A group of Arab states led by Saudi Arabia is urging the United States and its allies to persuade Israel to consider a renewed plan for a Palestinian state that they say will ease tensions in the Middle East, according to several Arab officials involved in the drafting the proposal.
While there are myriad obstacles to overcome – not least the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas – the alliance comprising Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates sees a potential ceasefire in the conflict becoming permanent and paving the way to new conversations. , said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters.
Many European states have embraced the unified Arab project, even if Washington is more distant, two officials said. The United States has previously viewed any deal for the Palestinians primarily in the context of its goal of forging diplomatic ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia while facilitating the Jewish state’s economic and security integration in the Middle East, they said.
The Arab proposal comes as negotiators from the United States, Egypt and Qatar try to secure at least a temporary pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas and the return of hostages held by the Iranian-backed militant group. That move may have been complicated by dozens of Palestinians killed or injured during an outbreak of violence around a convoy of food trucks on Thursday, US President Joe Biden told reporters at the White House.
Israel will also seek help from its Middle Eastern neighbors to rebuild Gaza when the conflict ends, Economy and Industry Minister Nir Barkat said in an interview earlier this week.
The plan, which builds on the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, would outline the creation of a Palestinian state along the lines of borders that existed before the 1967 Six-Day War. It would include measures such as reducing Israeli settlements in the Israeli-controlled West Bank by the Palestinian Authority – one of the two main Palestinian territories along with Gaza – and mechanisms to implement a two-state solution, the two senior Arab officials said.
Arab states will not be involved in rebuilding Gaza unless there is a commitment from Israel to take steps toward establishing a Palestinian state, officials said.
The Saudi Arabia-led group sees acceptance of the Palestinian proposal as the ultimate goal, but potentially insurmountable challenges remain. First, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted that any halt to Israel’s campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the atrocities committed by the group on October 7 will be temporary, as the only goal is “total victory.” Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.
Israel will resist having Palestinian statehood “shoved down our throats,” Netanyahu told CBS News on Sunday.
Realistic plan
Meanwhile, Washington and Riyadh are working on what they see as a more realistic version of the plan. This prospect seeks to exploit the prospect of Saudi Arabia recognizing Israel to extract concessions from the Jewish state on the Palestinian state, according to a person familiar with U.S. thinking. The full-blown Arabic version does not reflect the reality of what is happening in Israel, the person said.
Saudi Arabia sees the two paths – the Arab plan and the talks with Washington – as complementary, a person close to the kingdom’s leadership said. The Arab plan could be announced publicly in the coming weeks and will serve as leverage to achieve maximum gains for the Palestinians, she added.
A Saudi Foreign Ministry official did not respond to a request for comment.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told his Saudi and UAE counterparts on Tuesday that Washington wants a “lasting peace through the creation of an independent Palestinian state with security guarantees for Israel.”
“An entire generation” of Arabs “now does not believe in the feasibility of peace with Israel,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said in an interview at the Munich Security Conference earlier this month.
“To overcome the amount of anger and indignation created by this war would take something transformative,” he said. There must be “a time-bound plan that begins with a final phase to achieve a Palestinian state.”
During a roundtable held at the same conference, both the foreign ministers of Egypt and Saudi Arabia warned that the war between Israel and Hamas, which has so far killed nearly 30,000 people in Gaza, according to Hamas-run health authorities, it is fueling extremism in the Arab and Muslim world. Hamas militants killed around 1,200 people on October 7.
The war is providing “a huge amount of oxygen” to those who do not believe in Arab-Jewish coexistence and to those who want to recruit young people into “extremist ideologies and acts of terror”, said Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal Bin Farhan. The continuation of the war is “a matter of national security for us in the region and beyond.”
Brussels conference
Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib said that “more and more” European Union countries were embracing the two-state plan led by Saudi Arabia and that Brussels would most likely host a conference to unveil it.
“We need action now,” he said.
Saudi Arabia believes Palestinian statehood is a “reasonable” price for Israel to pay in exchange for diplomatic relations with Riyadh and it is up to the United States to convince the Jewish state, Robert Satloff, executive director of the Palestinian think tank, said last week. Washington Institute. a trip to the region.
The problem is that most Arab states don’t seem to realize how much October 7 changed Israel, with the population caught up in a wave of wartime patriotism and still traumatized by the Hamas incursion, he added.
“For the vast majority of Israelis, even talking about the two-state solution is considered bizarre, even perverse,” Satloff said.
— With assistance from Peter Martin, Ethan Bronner and Tom Hall