<\/p>\n
International Online Desk<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Admirers are calling it a \u201cmasterclass in diplomacy\u201d that offers a true chance for peace in the Middle East. Critics say it is a selfish move, a \u201cpublicity stunt\u201d to help burnish a country\u2019s international image more often in the headlines for human rights abuses.<\/p>\n
So why is Saudi Arabia leading the charge for international recognition of a Palestinian state?<\/p>\n
The current Saudi push for more countries to recognize Palestinian statehood actually began around a year ago. In September 2024, Saudi Arabia, together with Norway, announced the launch of a \u201cGlobal Alliance for the Implementation of the Two-State Solution\u201d and held the first two meetings in Riyadh.<\/p>\n
In December 2024, the United Nations General Assembly voted to confirm again that most countries in the world believe the answer to problems between Israel and the Palestinian Territories is a two-state solution.<\/p>\n
Last week, Saudi Arabia and France chaired a conference on the topic. During and after the meeting, multiple countries \u2014 France, Canada, Malta, the UK and Australia \u2014 announced they would definitely be, or were very seriously thinking about, recognizing a Palestinian state.<\/p>\n
The meeting also resulted in a seven-page document, the \u201cNew York Declaration,\u201d signed by all member states of the Arab League, as well as the EU and around 17 other countries.<\/p>\n
The declaration outlines a phased path towards a two-state solution. It calls on Hamas, the Palestinian group that led the resistance campaign into southern Israel on October 7, 2023, to disarm, release remaining Israeli hostages and give up leadership in Gaza. \u201cWe also condemn the attacks by Israel against civilians in Gaza and civilian infrastructure, siege and starvation, which have resulted in a devastating humanitarian catastrophe,\u201d the signatories said.<\/p>\n
The fact that all 22 members of the Arab League signed the declaration was seen as a diplomatic breakthrough. It is the first time many have censured Hamas so publicly.<\/p>\n
And Saudi Arabia, together with France, has been credited with helping to make it all happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven Saudi Arabia\u2019s position within the Arab and Islamic world, and the kingdom\u2019s stewardship of [sacred religious sites] Mecca and Medina, anything Saudi Arabia does carries weight,\u201d Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a Middle East fellow at Rice University\u2019s Baker Institute for Public Policy, explained.<\/p>\n
Why are the Saudis doing this now?
\nBefore the October 7, 2023 resistance campaign and the ensuing Israeli military campaign, there was much talk of Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel. But if it did, it would do so without any regard to the cause of Palestinian statehood, long a serious obstacle between Israel and good relations with its neighbors.<\/p>\n
As a result, Saudi Arabia was often seen by locals in other Arab nations as a \u201ctraitor\u201d to the Palestinian cause. This is why some critics have suggested that Saudi Arabia\u2019s recent moves at the UN are simply a way of combating that negative image in the Arab and Islamic world.<\/p>\n
But in fact, as Aziz Alghashian, a Saudi analyst with Washington-based think tank, the Gulf International Forum, wrote in the Cairo Review of Global Affairs, \u201cone of the enduring misconceptions on this topic is the idea that Saudi willingness to normalize ties with Israel is something new \u2014 when it actually dates back to the late 1960s.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saudi Arabian plans for a two-state solution also go back decades, Coates Ulrichsen pointed out.<\/p>\n
In 2002, Saudi Arabia\u2019s King Abdullah (who was crown prince at the time) proposed what is now known as the Arab Peace Initiative. At an Arab League summit in Beirut that same year, all the member states agreed to support the proposal, which among other things, says they would all recognize and normalize relations with Israel if Israel ended its occupation and agreed to establish a Palestinian state.<\/p>\n
Over time, the initiative was derailed for a number of reasons, among them disagreements about Palestinians\u2019 right to return to land taken from them by Israel, the Arab Spring which changed the focus of regional politics, and then the Abraham Accords, which saw several Arab states normalize with Israel in their own interests.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut for many years, the Arab Peace Initiative was the default Saudi position,\u201d Coates Ulrichsen said, a position that was reaffirmed as recently as 2020.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, the urgency of the situation in Gaza and the worsening violence in the West Bank likely means that the Saudis have calculated that they cannot stay silent in the face of such destruction and humanitarian suffering,\u201d he continued. In fact, last week\u2019s \u201cNew York Declaration\u201d has already been described as a reboot of the 2002 Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative.<\/p>\n
Push for peace in Saudis\u2019 own interest
\nExperts say there are also other reasons why leading a push towards Palestinian statehood benefits Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
One obvious one is regional stability, crucial for Saudi Arabia to realize grand plans to diversify its economy away from oil.<\/p>\n
Saudi diplomacy also advances other foreign policy objectives. \u201cRiyadh\u2019s leadership is part of a calculated Saudi repositioning,\u201d Arab-language media outlet Raseef22 argued in an op-ed last week. \u201cSaudi Arabia has transformed the Arab Peace Initiative into a political lever with international relevance, forming an Arab-Islamic voting bloc, [giving it] influence in energy and maritime security negotiations with the West and, perhaps most importantly, consolidating its position in the post-[Gaza]-war architecture.\u201d<\/p>\n
Will the Saudi-French initiative succeed?
\nIt is too early to tell, Coates Ulrichsen says. \u201cBut the fact that the UK and Canada have both come out with statements of conditional recognition of Palestine suggests the Saudi-French approach is moving the needle.\u201d<\/p>\n
After last week\u2019s meeting in New York, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan called on more UN member states to support the \u201cNew York Declaration\u201d before the next UN General Assembly in early September.<\/p>\n
There is a good chance many might because it offers a way out, Faisal J. Abbas, a regular commentator on Saudi topics and the editor-in-chief of the English language daily Arab News, wrote for US website, Semafor, last week. \u201cFor Washington, the Saudi-French diplomatic initiative fits within American strategic interests and offers a route out of perpetual conflict. It could help stabilize the region, reducing the need for US military involvement,\u201d he argued. \u201cAnd it offers Israel long-term security guarantees, if it\u2019s willing to abandon demands from its far right to annex the West Bank, alongside other maximalist positions.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Saudi-French initiative still faces considerable opposition from Israel and its ally, the US.<\/p>\n
Neither Israel nor the US participated in the meeting and both have criticized it. The Trump administration called it a \u201cpublicity stunt,\u201d and Israel\u2019s ambassador to the UN complained that \u201cconference organizers are engaging in discussions and plenaries that are disconnected from reality.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
International Online Desk Admirers are calling it a \u201cmasterclass in diplomacy\u201d that offers a true chance for peace in the Middle East. Critics say it is a selfish move, a \u201cpublicity stunt\u201d to help burnish a country\u2019s international image more often in the headlines for human rights abuses. So why is Saudi Arabia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":64376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-4","category-14"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64375"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64377,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64375\/revisions\/64377"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/64376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}