https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/09/saudi-arabia-suspends-talks-about-normalizing-ties-with-israel
Saudi Arabia has informed the Biden administration of its decision to halt all talks of normalizing ties with Israel on Sunday [Sept. 17], the Arab news outlet Elaph cited an Israeli official in the Prime Minister’s Office as saying.
According to the unconfirmed report, Riyadh issued a message through the US, explaining that the “extremist” nature of Israel’s right-wing government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “torpedoing any possibility of rapprochement with the Palestinians, and thus with the Saudis,” as per Aleph.
Furthermore, the report specified that Saudi Arabia was put off from a potential peace deal due to Netanyahu’s “acceptance” of demands made by the likes of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who the Saudis see as “extreme right.”
But Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have been part of Netanyahu’s cabinet since the end of 2022; their views are well known to everyone, including the Saudis, who are now feigning surprise at their “extreme right” views prevailing in Jerusalem. The Saudis wish to present themselves to the Americans as eager for normalizing ties with Israel, but unfortunately the “extremists” in Netanyahu’s cabinet have made that impossible. In fact, Netanyahu himself has always been unwilling — he didn’t need any pressure from Smotrich or Ben-Gvir — to give the Saudis what they apparently want for the Palestinians. They want a Palestinian state encompassing all of the West Bank and Gaza. That is, they want Israel to withdraw within the 1949 armistice lines, that Abba Eban famously called “the lines of Auschwitz,” leaving Israel stripped of its critical defenses in the Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights, and with a nine-mile-wide waist from Qalqilya to the sea. And Israel would be expected to give up east Jerusalem, as well, which includes the Old City and the Temple Mount. No Israeli government would accede to such a demand.
Last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Saudi Arabia has let the Biden administration know that resolving Palestinian issues is critical for any normalization deal with Israel.
“It is also clear from what we hear from the Saudis that if this process is to move forward, the Palestinian piece is going to be very important too,” he said on Wednesday [Sept. 13] in an interview with the podcast Pod Save the World.
Israeli normalization with the Arab world and “any of the efforts that are going on to improve relations between Israel and its neighbors can not be a substitute for Israel and the Palestinians resolving their differences and having a much better future for Palestinians,” Blinken said.
“In our judgment that needs to involve a two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he explained.