By DION NISSENBAUM and SUMMER SAID
4:21PM AUGUST 30, 2023 (The Australian)
Saudi Arabia is offering to resume financial support to the Palestinian Authority, said Saudi officials and former Palestinian officials familiar with the discussions, a sign that the kingdom is making a serious effort to overcome obstacles to establishing diplomatic relations with Israel.
Saudi officials say they are trying to secure Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s support for open ties with Israel, providing more legitimacy to any eventual agreement and forestalling any accusations that the kingdom would sacrifice Palestinian efforts to establish an independent state to advance its own goals. Recognising Israel is especially sensitive for Saudi Arabia because it hosts Islam’s holiest sites, giving it a special status in the Muslim world, where Palestinian statehood remains an emotional rallying cry.
The Saudi outreach has fuelled a debate among Palestinian leaders about whether to back the kingdom’s outreach to Israel — a move that would represent a significant shift from officials who accused Gulf leaders of stabbing them in the back when they established diplomatic ties with Israel in 2020.
To advance their interests, the Palestinian Authority is sending a senior delegation to Saudi Arabia next week to discuss what the kingdom can do in talks with Israel to advance flickering hopes of creating a Palestinian state, the officials said.
Saudi Arabia has been a staunch supporter and benefactor of the Palestinians since 1948, when Arab leaders launched an unsuccessful war to prevent the creation of Israel. The kingdom has pumped more than $US5bn into Palestinian causes, including direct support to the Palestinian Authority. But Riyadh began cutting back funding to the Palestinian Authority in 2016 amid allegations of incompetence and corruption, with aid plunging from $US174m a year in 2019 to zero in 2021.
Now, resumption of Saudi funding to the Palestinians could play an important role in securing their support for the kingdom’s outreach to Israel.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman first raised the idea of funding with Abbas at a meeting in Saudi Arabia in April, connecting the resumption of aid to the authority cracking down on militant groups and violence in the West Bank, according to Saudis and Palestinians briefed on the talks.
Militant groups hold more power than Palestinian security forces in some cities, and Israel has responded to the rise in Palestinian attacks with repeated military operations. More than 200 Palestinians and nearly 30 Israelis have been killed this year, in what the United Nations said is already the highest recorded annual death toll since the end of the second Palestinian uprising in 2005.
If Abbas can get security under control, the crown prince offered assurances that the kingdom would eventually resume its funding for the Palestinian Authority and that Saudi Arabia wouldn’t accept any deal with Israel that undermines efforts to create an independent Palestinian state, the officials said.
Reducing West Bank violence would represent an important step toward the broader goal of Saudi-Israeli normalisation. If the Palestinian Authority can get a handle on militancy, it would demonstrate its ability to govern an independent state that wouldn’t pose a threat to Israel. It would also allow Israeli forces to scale back deadly military operations in the West Bank that have hurt their image across the region and hampered their ability to forge new relationships with Arab neighbours.
While the Saudi proposal wasn’t explicitly tied to Palestinian support for a Saudi-Israel diplomatic deal, the offer provides Palestinians with more incentives to back the kingdom’s efforts, the officials said.
In recent months, the Palestinian Authority has begun trying to reassert control in cities like Jenin, where militant groups had taken effective control, making it a target of frequent Israeli military raids.
Several Palestinian Authority officials didn’t respond to requests for comment. Palestinian leaders were blindsided by the Abraham Accords, which opened diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan in 2020. As part of that Trump administration-brokered deal, Israel suspended plans to annex parts of the West Bank, providing limited relief from continued Israeli settlement expansion on land once expected to be part of a Palestinian state.
At the time, Abbas accused the U.A.E. of stabbing the Palestinian people in the back. Emirati leaders said the deal had preserved chances for creation of a Palestinian state by staving off Israeli annexation of West Bank land.
Getting Palestinian support is one of a thicket of challenges facing any Saudi-Israel deal, including the fast-approaching U.S. presidential campaign and resistance from Israeli leaders and U.S. lawmakers wary of giving the kingdom help developing a nuclear program and more military aid.
Some Abbas advisers want the Palestinian leadership to provide the Saudis with plausible concessions they could ask of Israel that would advance efforts to create a Palestinian state.
“Saudi-Palestinian relations are strong, and we have confidence in them, ” Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki said earlier this month.
“We would like very much to listen to the Saudis, to co-ordinate with the Saudis and to see how we can endorse and strengthen the position of the Saudis when it comes to this particular matter, and how the Saudis could hear from us about the steps that they should undertake as necessary steps in order for the question of Palestine to be resolved,” he said.
Palestinians who support active co-operation with the Saudis say they want to ensure that the Saudis don’t trade away their concerns to advance the kingdom’s more important interests.
“It’s much easier to bypass the Palestinians when you call the Saudis backstabbers,” said one Palestinian. “It’s more difficult when you co-operate.” Other Palestinian officials are wary of being betrayed by Saudi leaders who have barely concealed their dim view of the Palestinian Authority’s leadership.
In their recent talks, Mohammed assured Abbas that he wouldn’t bend in his support for the Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative. In that 2002 proposal, the Arab League agreed to establish open ties with Israel only when it allowed the creation of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
With the Gaza Strip run by the rival Palestinian group Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, and East Jerusalem annexed by Israel, meeting that bar right now appears unattainable. That makes it unlikely Mohammed would hold firm to such an expansive demand if he hopes to secure a deal with Israel soon. Saudi leaders have told U.S. officials that they expect Palestinians to accept concessions short of statehood and that the Palestinians won’t have any power to veto a Saudi-Israel deal.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long suggested that Saudi Arabia cares little about the Palestinians and that he won’t have to agree to anything that advances the realistic prospects for an independent Palestinian state. Saudi leaders have insisted publicly that they will accept nothing less than what is in the Arab Peace Initiative. If it secures a deal with Israel that doesn’t achieve that, Saudi Arabia is expected to continue to support the initiative’s goals, just as the Emiratis did in 2020 when they normalised relations.
Fatima AbdulKarim contributed to this article, The Wall Street Journal