A group of Arab states led by Saudi Arabia is calling on the United States and its allies to persuade Israel to consider a revamped Palestinian statehood plan that they say would reduce tensions in the Middle East, according to several Arab officials involved in drafting the proposal.
Although there are many obstacles to overcome, not least the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas — The alliance, which includes Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, sees potential ceasefire the conflict becomes permanent and opens the way to new negotiations, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive issues.
Many European states have accepted the unified Arab plan, although Washington diverges further from them, two officials said. They said the US had previously viewed any deal for the Palestinians largely in the context of its goal of establishing diplomatic ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia while facilitating the economic and security integration of the Jewish state into the Middle East.
The Arab proposal is being submitted by negotiators from the United States, Egypt and Qatar. try to secure at least a temporary pause in the fighting between Israel and Hamas and the return of hostages held by the Iran-backed militant group. This initiative could have been complicated by the many Palestinians killed or wounded during outbreak of violence around a convoy of food trucks on Thursday, US President Joe Biden told reporters at the White House.
Israel will also turn to your Middle Eastern neighbors for help To rebuild the Gaza Strip when the conflict finally ends, Economy and Industry Minister Nir Barkat said in an interview earlier this week.
Plan based on Arab Peace Initiative 2002It is expected to outline the creation of a Palestinian state along the borders that existed before the 1967 Six-Day War. It would include measures such as dismantling Israeli settlements in the Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank – one of the two main Palestinian territories next to the Gaza Strip – and mechanisms to implement a two-state solution, two senior Arab officials said.
Arab states will not participate in the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip unless Israel commits to taking steps toward Palestinian statehood, officials said.
The Saudi-led group sees passage of its Palestine proposal as the ultimate goal, but potentially insurmountable challenges remain. First, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists that any halt to Israel’s campaign to destroy Hamas in response to the group’s October 7 atrocities will be temporary, as “total victory” is sole purpose. 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 said CBS News on Sunday.
Realistic plan
Meanwhile, Washington and Riyadh are working on what they believe is a more realistic version of the plan. The prospect aims to use the prospect of Saudi recognition of Israel to extract concessions from the Jewish state regarding Palestinian statehood, according to a person familiar with US thinking. The full-blown Arabic version does not reflect the reality of what is happening in Israel, the person said.
Saudi Arabia views two directions – the Arab plan and negotiations with Washington – as complementary to each other, said a person close to the kingdom’s leadership. The Arab plan could be announced publicly in the coming weeks and would serve as leverage to achieve maximum benefits for the Palestinians, he added.
A Saudi Foreign Ministry spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told his Saudi and UAE counterparts on Tuesday that Washington wants “sustainable 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 viability of peace with Israel,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said in an interview at the Munich Security Conference earlier this month.
“It will take something transformative to deal with the amount of anger and resentment caused by this war,” he said. There must be a “time-bound plan that begins with the final stage of establishing a Palestinian state.”
During a panel discussion at the same conference, 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 the Gaza Strip, according to Hamas-run health authorities, is fueling extremism to the Arab and Muslim worlds. On October 7, Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people.
The war provides “enormous amounts 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 terrorist acts,” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said. The continuation of the war is “a matter of national security for us in the region and beyond.”
Brussels Conference
Belgian Foreign Minister Khaja Lahbib said “more and more” European Union countries support the Saudi Arabia-led two-state plan and Brussels is likely to hold a conference to unveil it.
“We need action now,” she said.
Saudi Arabia believes Palestinian statehood is a “reasonable” price Israel should pay in exchange for diplomacy with Riyadh, and it is up to the US to convince the Jewish state, Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute think tank, said. said last week after a trip to the region.
The problem is that most Arab states do not seem to realize how much the events of October 7 changed Israel, whose population was caught up in the crisis. wave of military patriotism and is still traumatized by the Hamas invasion, he added.
“For the vast majority of Israelis, even talk of a two-state solution is considered strange and even perverse,” Satloff said.
— With assistance from Peter Martin, Ethan Bronner and Tom Hall.