Although negotiations for a normalization agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel, with the United States as a sponsor, have been going on for several months, this possibility had not received as great a boost, at least in rhetoric, as it received a few days ago in New York. .
The UN General Assembly served as a backdrop, but the screen of the American channel Fox News was the setting chosen by the Saudi crown prince, Mohamed bin Salman, to verbalize for the first time that “every day we are closer” (to a deal). .
That “closeness” not only filled Beniamin Netanyahu with optimism, but, before an almost empty auditorium, but with the presence of a Saudi diplomat – a change from the traditional Arab absence in the speeches of Israeli leaders – he dared to say that both are “on the cusp of spectacular progress.”
His Foreign Minister, Eli Cohen, went further and set the beginning of 2024 as the phase for finalizing the final details, in addition to predicting that “six or seven Muslim nations” will follow in the footsteps of the Saudis. However, it is worth asking what grounds there are to think about an agreement between the Jewish State and the main actor in the Islamic world, and what obstacles it could face.
The great support is the desire of the three involved. The United States has admitted to having a “real national security interest” in getting its two allies in the Middle East to recognize each other.
This would be a huge achievement for the Joe Biden Administration, within the framework of “a broader strategy to overcome [the influence of] China and, to a lesser extent, Russia,” according to analyst Steven A. Cook, a researcher in the region. .
For its part, Israel sees normalization as an opportunity to bury the Arab-Israeli conflict and expand its relations with Islamic nations; while, for Riyadh, it would open the door to economic and security cooperation to feed Bin Salman's Vision 2030, a pragmatic bet that has already led to closer positions with Iran, Syria and Turkey.
Likewise, the Sunni kingdom seeks the United States to give it more weapons and security guarantees, and its support for the development of a civil nuclear program, with uranium enrichment on Saudi soil. “If Iran gets a nuclear weapon, we must have one,” Bin Salman said in that meeting with Fox News.
This is where the first fracture between the parties arises. Although, according to the American news agency Bloomberg, Washington is considering signing twin defense pacts with Israel and Saudi Arabia, allowing a Saudi nuclear program would be too high a price. Interviewed on CNN, Netanyahu raised “important issues” on this issue, although he also pointed out that there is “a window of opportunity in the coming months.”
The Palestinian question breaks that gap a little further. Bin Salman does not cultivate loyalty to the Palestinians, but his father, King Salman bin Abdulaziz, knows that in terms of public opinion this is still an Arab struggle and considered it “very important” within the pact.
The crown prince has avoided explicitly raising the creation of a Palestinian state. Instead, what is on the table is for Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians, which would include Israel ceding control of occupied areas of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority or eliminating illegal outposts. Unlike what happened with the Abraham Accords between Israel and some Arab countries, the Palestinian Authority is not calling for a boycott and has signaled its conditions to Saudi Arabia.
But even the slightest concession sounds impossible under the current far-right Israeli government, with a Netanyahu who, in addition to demanding that the Palestinians not be granted “veto power,” directly eliminated them from the maps he used at the UN. to show their “New Middle East”.
It is also unclear how far Riyadh would be willing to go. “In all cases, even with minor concessions and more talk about a two-state solution, Palestinians after another Abraham Accord are likely to find themselves with even less influence and fewer options than before. And the Israeli right would be correctly confirmed in its opinion that it can maintain its colonization of the West Bank and sustain what is in practice an apartheid-like system without major consequences,” predicts Paul Salem, president of the Washington-based Middle East Institute. .
Other unknowns loom over the eventual signatories of an agreement, and they are internal resistance. Will Biden be able to obtain the approval of Democrats and Republicans for a pact that involves Saudi Arabia, a country that he had promised to treat as a “pariah” and that is unpopular among congressmen? Can it promote an achievement that would strengthen the most far-right Israeli government in history, despite protests inside and outside Israel?
These are questions and obstacles that the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel will have to overcome if they want to reach their long-awaited normalization agreement.
