Israel is again trying to ignore the clear statements and hints from the Saudis during discussions with the Americans about normalization with Israel. The Saudis have made it clear to the Americans that there won't be normalization with Israel without resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but Israel has preferred to ignore this and says that normalization with Saudi Arabia will happen without a solution or concessions on the Palestinian issue. During talks, the Israelis have even said that the Saudis don't really intend to solve the Palestinian question, and all their statements and declarations – even the reaffirming of the Arab Peace Initiative at the Arab League's Jeddah Summit – was lip service to Arab and Islamic public opinion.
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Israel, like the United States, is misreading the Saudi declarations, and doen't really think that the Saudis mean everything they say. When Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and told the American interviewer on Fox News that a solution to the Palestinian question is a basic condition for normalization, Israel preferred to look for other statements and noted that bin Salman didn't say explicitly "the establishment of a Palestinian state" but "easing the life of Palestinians."
Some of the American officials told Israel that their impression is that the Saudis aren't insisting on the Palestinian issue, but President Joe Biden emphasized to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the importance to the Saudis of a solution to the Palestinian question. From their perspective, this is a basic condition for moving toward peace. At the start of his meeting with Netanyahu in New York, Biden even declared that there is progress towards the two-state solution. Again in Israel, they decided to ignore it and continued to tell the country's citizens, like everyone else in the world, that according to diplomatic and security figures, they are extremely close to normalization. While Netanyahu and Biden are trying to sketch a map towards normalization, a solution to the Palestinian question, and the end of the conflict, the Saudis are distributing their official updated map in which "Palestine" is written instead of "Israel." This map was presented and approved in recent weeks by the Saudi General Authority for Survey and Geospatial Information. By the way, the map includes the two islands Tiran and Sanafir that Egypt transferred to Saudi Arabia around three years ago with Israeli approval.
Something else that Israel is trying to ignore is the fact that there is a king in Saudi Arabia called Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, and it's extremely difficult to see all his heritage being expressed through normalization with Israel. King Salman is one of the fathers of the Arab Peace Initiative, and there's no way this will be dropped from the Saudi agenda as long as he's still alive.
Another Saudi (and no less problematic) obstacle that has been placed in front of the Israeli prime minister on his way to normalization is the enrichment of uranium on Saudi soil. Regarding this problem, it's extremely difficult to imagine Israel agreeing to it without American guarantees and involvement, and what's more, bin Salman declared that if Iran had a nuclear bomb, then he would also try to get one, and it's not like it would be a big problem to acquire a nuclear bomb, since the Pakistani nuclear program is funded by the Saudis.
If Netanyahu had listened to what the Saudis told him 10 years ago and would have carried out the required steps – and, in terms of the composition of the Knesset and the government, it was much easier during his time than today – and he knows exactly to what I'm referring to – he would be proud today of the most significant achievement by an Israeli leader since Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin and even both of them together, and, as noted by bin Salman in his interview with Fox News, this would really have been seen as a major historical achievement.
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