The surprise offensive of the movement Hamas on Israel on Saturday brought the Palestinian cause back into the spotlight and undermined attempts to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia under the auspices of United Statescomments AFP, quoted by Agerpres.
In September, at the United Nations forum in New York, the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied the centrality of the Palestinian issue. He hailed the normalization of Israel’s relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, in the dynamics of the 2020 Abraham Accords, as “the dawn of a new era”.
Netanyahu also said that Israel is close to “an even more spectacular progress, a historic peace” with Saudi Arabia, a major power in the Arab world.
US President Joe Biden, eager to score points on the diplomatic front before the 2024 presidential elections, especially if he will face his predecessor, Donald Trump, under whose auspices the Abraham Accords were signed, has been working for months for this proximity.
Negotiations between the United States’ oldest allies in the Middle East, which share concerns about Iran’s developing nuclear program, were due to take place in the coming weeks.
“The slope was steep, but it’s getting steeper” after the Hamas attack on Israel, warned Brian Katulis, a researcher at the Middle East Institute in Washington.
The intensity and scale of the violence, which casts a harsh light on the extent of the unresolved issues between Israel and the Palestinians, “make it difficult now to sweep these complicated issues under the rug, as was the case at the time of the Abraham Accords,” Katulis added.
Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has also recently announced steps forward near Israel, but has called for progress on the Palestinian issue, considered a priority by his father, King Salman.
Riyadh, moreover, returned to a more classic speech in its first reaction to the violence, on Saturday, claiming that it warned of the existence of an “explosive situation resulting from the continuation of the (Israeli) occupation and the deprivation of legitimate rights suffered by the Palestinian people.”
For Aziz Alghashian, a Saudi specialist in Israeli-Saudi relations, the kingdom is acting in this way to reject the idea that it would favor the normalization of relations with Israel at the expense of its support for the Palestinians. “The situation has returned Saudi Arabia to its traditional role,” he said.
“Netanyahu has added an obstacle to these normalization talks by saying it’s a war” following the Hamas attack, said Alghashian, who “doesn’t see how normalization can happen with a war in the background.”
Hamas, supported by Iran, was able to act “for fear of further marginalization of the Palestinian cause” in the event of Saudi Arabia’s recognition of Israel, commented Joost Hiltermann, responsible for the Middle East at the think tank International Crisis Group ( ICG).
However, Israel’s military reaction, which is expected to be massive, will force the Arab states to adopt a tougher line towards it, taking into account in particular public opinion that is very sensitive to the Palestinian cause.
The Israeli military will use “all its might” to “destroy the capabilities” of Hamas, Netanyahu said late Saturday, calling Gaza a “city of evil.”
“One could imagine a scenario of cooling relations with the Emirates and probably at least postponing any possible agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia,” continued Joost Hiltermann.
For the influential Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, these attacks seem to have been “designed to block” the rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel, because “a peace agreement between these two countries would have been a nightmare for Iran and Hamas.”
2023-10-08 04:31:35
#Researchers #claim #long #find #signs #life #Universe
