TRUMP PEACE: Saudi crown prince: ‘We don’t look at Israel as an enemy, we look to them as a potential ally’
Israel and Saudi Arabia will normalize their relations after President Trump is re-elected in January 2025. The statements from MBS about conditioning peace with Israel on a settlement with the Palestinians is just political rhetoric. In fact, it is very plausible that MBS has no interest in the Palestinians at all. When he sees the huge economic benefits that the UAE and Bahrain will reap from their relations with Israel, he will most certainly want in on the action. As will Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar.
Saudi crown prince: Israel could be ‘potential ally’
By I-24 News, March 3, 2022
‘We don’t look at Israel as an enemy, we look to them as a potential ally’
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said Israel could be a “potential ally” of Riyadh, in remarks published Thursday.
“For us, we hope that the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is solved,” the prince told US monthly magazine The Atlantic, according to remarks carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.
“We don’t look at Israel as an enemy, we look to them as a potential ally, with many interests that we can pursue together,” Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler said.
“But we have to solve some issues before we get to that,” he added.
Saudi Arabia does not have diplomatic relations with Israel.
But in 2020, two of its main Gulf allies – Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates – normalized ties with Israel, becoming the third and fourth Arab states to do so after Egypt and Jordan.
Saudi Arabia has repeatedly said it would stick to the decades-old Arab League position of not establishing official ties with Israel until the conflict with the Palestinians is resolved.
In December 2021, Saudi Arabia’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Abdallah Al-Mouallimi, told Arab News that Riyadh is ready to normalize relations with the Jewish state “as soon as the terms of [the Arab Peace Initiative]… are implemented.”
Prince Mohammed has, however, seems more open than his father – King Salman – towards Israel, allowing its commercial aircraft to pass through Saudi air space.
Last month, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud told the Hebrew-language newspaper Maariv that normalization will materialize when Israel follows a “just solution” to the Palestinian issue.
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