When a group of three
Arab states forged
landmark diplomatic ties with Israel in 2020, the Palestinian leadership saw
the process as a betrayal: the deals upended a decades-old Arab practice of
ostracizing Israel until the creation of Palestinian state.
اضافة اعلان
Three years on, amid efforts by the United States to broker
a similar pact between Israel and
Saudi Arabia, Palestinian leaders are taking
a different tack: engagement.
On Tuesday, three senior
Palestinian envoys are set toarrive in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, for discussions about what demands Saudi
Arabia could make on the Palestinians’ behalf in exchange for forming ties with
Israel.
That approach reverses the dynamic in 2020, when Bahrain,
Morocco, and UAE forged relations with Israel without consulting the
Palestinians — let alone winning them lasting concessions. Back then, the
Palestinians only condemned the process.
While there remains little
Palestinian enthusiasm for the
normalization process, the shift reflects how its leadership now feels it has
more to gain through involvement in the negotiations, at least at this early
stage.
Since entering office in December,
Israel’s far-right government has entrenched control over the occupied West Bank, announcing huge
expansions of Israeli settlements, making the prospect of a
Palestinian stateever being created even more remote. Engagement with Saudi Arabia offers the
Palestinians a chance to sustain regional support for their cause when momentum
for it is dwindling.
“Basically, they have internalized their past mistake,” said
Ibrahim Dalalsha, an analyst based in
Ramallah in the West Bank. In 2020, “they
really felt that their reaction cost them,” Dalalsha said. Now, they have
“rethought the whole process.”
“There is no other alternative for the Palestinians,” he
added.
For their part, the Saudis are also seeking weightier
concessions than those offered in 2020 to their neighbors the Emiratis.
As a quid pro quo for normalization, Riyadh wants greater
military cooperation with the United States, as well as U.S. support for a
civil nuclear program.
They really felt that their reaction cost them,” Now, they have “rethought the whole process.”
But it also wants Israel to make meaningful concessions to
the Palestinians and is considering what to ask for, according to diplomats
briefed on the negotiations.
In 2020, the UAE leadership secured only a symbolic gesture:
the temporary postponement of plans by Israel to annex the West Bank. Analysts
think the Saudis, mindful of their powerful role in the Middle East, want to
win something more significant for the Palestinians.
“Saudi Arabia sees itself as the leading state on the
Islamic level,” said Ghassan Khatib, a former Palestinian minister and a
Ramallah-based analyst. “So they try to behave as such.”
The Palestinian and Saudi leaderships have been talking
since April about what the Palestinians might gain from the talks. Mahmoud
Abbas, the president of the semi-autonomous Palestinian administration in the
Israeli-occupied West Bank, visited Jeddah that month, and contacts have been
maintained since. In a show of good will last month, the Saudis appointed their
first envoy to the Palestinians, Naif Al-Sudairi.
Publicly, Abbas’ office says that it wants Saudi Arabia to
settle for nothing less than a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza, and
East Jerusalem, all territories captured by Israel during the 1967 Arab-Israeli
war.
“There is only one demand: implementing the Arab Peace
Initiative,” Majdi Khaldi, one of the three senior Palestinian officials
traveling to Riyadh, said in a phone interview, referring to a Saudi-sponsored
plan published in 2002 that called for the establishment of such a state.
Khaldi, a foreign policy adviser to Abbas, denied his
government had made any smaller-scale proposals.
But in private, Palestinian officials have discussed pushing
for concessions that are more modest, though mainly still unfeasible, according
to six diplomats briefed on the discussions, who asked for anonymity to speak
more freely, and a list of Palestinian talking points reviewed by The New York
Times.
Those demands include the restoration of Saudi financial
support for the Palestinians, which was phased out in recent years, after a
leading Saudi official expressed frustration at perceived Palestinian
ingratitude.
The Palestinians’ demands also include U.S. support for full
Palestinian membership of the U.N. (the Palestinians have only observer status),
and the transfer of more land to Palestinian administrative control in the West
Bank. Since the 1990s, Abbas’ Palestinian Authority has exerted its limited
autonomy in only 39 percent of the territory; Israel directly controls the
remaining 61 percent.
There is only one demand: implementing the Arab Peace Initiative,
The restoration of Saudi financial support could be a likely
outcome of the Palestinian engagement, but the other demands appear overly
ambitious.
The Israeli government, dominated by ministers who favor
annexing the entire West Bank, is unlikely to cede territory.
And even if the Biden administration was to support
Palestinian membership of the United Nations, then that would probably trigger
a freeze on U.S. funding for the body, which receives roughly one-fifth of its
budget from Washington. Congress passed legislation in the 1990s that forces
the United States to cut funding to any U.N. body that gives membership to the
Palestinians.
But if the Palestinian leadership makes smaller demands,
that would risk drawing further criticism from Palestinians who feel Abbas
should not have engaged in the process at all.
“Any negotiations about a price for normalization are a
strategic error,” said Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian opposition politician
based in Ramallah. “They’re going to get nothing.” He added, “Any new
normalization will only consolidate a system of apartheid and occupation.”
But others believe Abbas hardly has a choice.
Boycotting the Saudi normalization process would risk
alienating both the U.S. and Saudi governments, two powerful partners that
Abbas can ill afford to ignore, Dalalsha said.
“If you ask the Palestinians, ‘Do you really expect anything
to happen?’ they would say, ‘No, and we wish it won’t happen,’” he said.
Nevertheless, Dalalsha added, “They are keen not to be
blamed for its failure.”
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