Once inconceivable, officials’ visits highlight warming Saudi-Israeli ties

JERUSALEM – Parallel visits this week by an Israeli minister to Saudi Arabia and a Saudi envoy to the Israeli-occupied West Bank highlighted the fast-warming ties between the Jewish state and the most powerful Arab country.

In the first-ever public visit by an Israeli minister to Saudi Arabia, Israeli Tourism Minister Haim Katz attended a multilateral tourism conference organised by the United Nations in Riyadh, the capital, on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Simultaneously, the Saudi Ambassador to the Palestinians, Mr Naif Bandar Al-Sudairi, travelled through an Israeli border checkpoint to visit the West Bank, where he met the leaders of the Palestinian Authority, the organisation that administers just under 40 per cent of the Israeli-controlled territory.

Experts said the visit by Mr Al-Sudairi, who is based in neighbouring Jordan, was the first known visit by a Saudi official to the region since Israel captured it from Jordan in the 1967 war between Israel and its Arab neighbours.

Inconceivable for most of Israel’s history, the two visits symbolised how Israel and Saudi Arabia are gradually setting the stage for the formalisation of their relationship, amid escalating efforts by the United States to broker a deal between the two countries.

“You are seeing things that could not even be imagined several years ago,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

Saudi Arabia has not recognised the Jewish state’s sovereignty since it was founded in 1948, preferring – like most Arab countries – to ostracise Israel until it agrees to allow the creation of a Palestinian state.

Now its leaders have signalled that they are considering recognising Israel despite a nearly decade-long lull in peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

Shared fears of Iran, coupled with mutual desire for greater trade links and military cooperation, helped seal three diplomatic deals, brokered in 2020 by the Trump administration, among Israel and three Arab states.

Three years later, the Biden administration is trying to mediate an even bigger deal between Israel and the Saudis – a deeply symbolic shift experts say would pave the way for the rest of the Muslim world to follow suit.

Talk of normalisation is “for the first time real”, said Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, in a Fox News interview last week.

“Every day we get closer,” he added.

In exchange for normalisation, Saudi Arabia wants the US and Israel to support the creation of a civil nuclear programme on Saudi soil and seeks greater military support from Americans.

The Saudis also want Israel to grant concessions to the Palestinians, though diplomats said it is not yet clear what exactly Saudi Arabia will ask for.

During his visit to the Palestinian Authority on Tuesday, Mr Al-Sudairi said the Arab Peace Initiative – a Saudi-sponsored proposal from 2002 that called for the establishment of a Palestinian state – remained “a cornerstone of any future agreement”.

But Prince Mohammed left room for manoeuvring in his interview last week.

He said any deal should “ease the life of the Palestinians”, a vaguer formulation that analysts speculate might refer to increased financial aid for the Palestinian Authority, rather than full sovereignty.

Any support for a Saudi nuclear programme would meet resistance among some US and Israeli politicians as well as officials, who fear Saudi Arabia might at some point use the technology to create a nuclear bomb.

Similarly, any concession to the Palestinians would set off anger within the Israeli governing coalition, which is the most stridently nationalist in Israeli history.

But the Saudi government risks enraging its own citizens, as well as the wider Muslim world, if it normalises ties with Israel for too small a benefit to the Palestinians.

The delicate situation was reflected in Mr al-Sudairi’s last-minute decision on Wednesday to cancel a visit to the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, a holy site sacred to both Jews and Muslims, which is controlled and policed by Israel.

Visiting the site under Israeli escort risked giving implicit recognition to Israeli control of the site.

In a separate development, the US government announced on Wednesday that from November, Israelis would be allowed to enter the US without a visa.

The move, which had been under negotiation for years, is partly the result of Israel’s recent decision to allow American citizens of Palestinian origin – except several hundred living in the Gaza Strip – to enter Israel without a visa.

Warmly welcomed in Israel, the move is one of several recent measures made by the Biden administration that have eased tensions with Mr Netanyahu.

US officials, including President Joe Biden himself, had expressed frustration with Mr Netanyahu over his contentious efforts to limit the power of Israel’s Supreme Court and his entrenchment of Israeli control over the West Bank.

But the visa waiver decision, coupled with the Saudi mediation and Mr Biden’s decision last week to invite Mr Netanyahu to the White House, have underscored how the fundamental contours of the US-Israel partnership remain unchanged, despite disagreements between the two leaders. NYTIMES