President Trump touted the 2020 Abraham Agreement, which established formal relations between Israel and four Arab countries, as one of the biggest foreign policy achievements of his first term.
Now, he pursues his long-standing goal of joining Saudi Arabia in consent, but he may have dealt with a serious setback on himself. Trump’s proposal to relocate all two million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and rebuild the enclave as the “Middle Eastern Riviera” has opposed some of the people he needed to seal the deal.
The idea of Gaza was quickly rejected by Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia. The Gulf powerhouse issued a pre-dawn statement shortly after Trump came up with Washington’s Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday evening.
The kingdom has made it clear that it is based on the demand that the Palestinian state be first established before normalizing relations with Israel. The assumptions that Saudi Arabians have argued for the past year are “unnegotiable and not subject to compromise,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement Wednesday.
The statement directly contradicted Trump, who had just told reporters in Washington that Saudi Arabia had dropped the premises. The senior Saudi Arabian royal said what the American leaders had proposed was equivalent to “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza.
By proposing to “clean out” Gaza, Trump has gained little doubt and rage in Arab countries. Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggests that Gazan will only be relocated temporarily, so efforts by the US administration to ease the stance have done little to ease them.
The issue of the Palestinian state lies at the heart of the debate over Trump’s Gaza proposal. For many Arabs, replacing the Palestinians is a disgust as it shreds hopes for an independent state.
Egypt and Jordan were countries that suggested that Trump would be persuaded to take Gazan, and had publicly asserted that they would never accept the massive displacement of the Palestinians. Officials, journalists and analysts from both countries said history spoke of itself.
Since the war in Gaza, both countries have recruited Palestinians who need medical appointments. Egypt has accepted at least 100,000 medical evacuees and other medical evacuees who fled from the adjacent enclave. Jordan’s population is of Palestinian descent and deals with dozens of injured people from Gaza.
However, he said participating in the forced or permanent movement of Palestinians from Gaza was “moral and legally horrifying,” according to Egypt’s political and political analyst and columnist Abdel Monem. Said Alli said.
Given the widespread support of the Saudi Arabian population for Palestinians, it is difficult for the government to accept an agreement that does not address its national aspirations. The outrage of the kingdom’s public over war and now Trump’s proposal to empty Gaza, complicating the prospects for dealings with Israel, which are already difficult to break away.
Before Trump took office in his second term there was a source of modest optimism that Saudi Arabia could move forward. A ceasefire between Israeli and Palestinian extremist group Hamas reached the eve of Trump’s January 20th inauguration. And for many years the new US president has nurtured a good working relationship with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia.
But now it appears that some stocks are showing up in the relationship.
Prince Turki al-Faisal, former Saudi spy chief and former US ambassador, told CNN on Wednesday that Trump “hears from his leadership here.” Also, there is fraud in “ethnic cleansing.”
As if to emphasize his point, he wore a Palestinian black and white checkered kaffier instead of his traditional white headdress.
Four Arab governments signed the Abraham Agreement – despite criticism that the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan are Arab prerequisites for relations with Israel, and Arab prerequisites for Palestinian establishment No, I did that. state.
When Bahrain and the Emirates became the first two countries to sign the agreement, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian authorities, called it “a stab wound in the back of the Palestinian people.” Mr. Abbas governs parts of the West Bank under Israeli occupation.
After 15 months of war in Gaza, the raging Arab masses are unlikely to accept a similar compromise at the moment, with Netanyahu’s Israeli government firmly opposed the Palestinian state.
“If normalization with Saudi Arabia depends on progress, even millimeters, to the Palestinian state, then that won’t happen. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was quoted as saying last month by Israeli Army Radio.
Saudi Arabia received historic signing of the Abraham Agreement, but when the contract expanded to include Morocco and Sudan, the Saudi Crown Prince called Israel a “potential ally” in a 2022 interview with the Atlantic. I called it.
In September 2023, the Crown Prince became the kingdom’s first leader, openly debating the possibility of establishing relations with Israel in exchange for a defense agreement with the United States, and assisting in the development of a civilian nuclear program. . He did not mention the Palestinian state on a conditional basis.
In an interview with Fox News at the time, the Crown Prince said such an agreement would require a “good life for the Palestinians.” Signs from the time pointed out that Saudi Arabia may also be willing to reduce its claims to the Palestinian state before establishing ties with Israel.
A Hamas-led attack on Israel subsequently occurred on October 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people. The subsequent 15 months of Israeli military campaign killed more than 46,000 people in Gaza, according to local health officials who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants. The war devastated poor territory, with dense populations.
Since the war, the Saudi Arabian government has changed its tone, saying that the region needs to be on an irreversible path to the state for the Palestinians.
“We have some red lines,” Prince Khalid bin Bandar, the UK’s Saudi ambassador, said later last month. “And for us, we need to include the Palestinian state to end the pain caused by the past 75 years and the suffering caused by one problem.”
Both Trump and Saudi leaders may have built their biggest positions as starting points for negotiations, and at some point they could shift to reach a compromise.
Many of the four countries that normalized relations with Israel have publicly protested the agreement, fearfully by the war in Gaza. The freedom of the association and freedom of assembly remained very limited in Bahrain, but the government has allowed protests.
Egypt and Jordan have had peace treaties with the Israelites for decades, but their masses have not warmed to Israel, and the bonds are severely tense by the war.
Egyptian officials told Cairo diplomats this week that Gazan’s refusal to move was unshakable. In public, they reiterated that Egypt is focusing on ensuring the ceasefire agreement and providing humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians there.
Egypt “rejects entirely any proposal or concept aimed at eliminating the Palestinian cause, whether temporary or permanent, by eradicating or banishing historic homeland and its seizures. “We are,” Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement Thursday.
Political analysts close to Egyptian and Jordanian governments suggested that leaders from both countries would try to persuade Trump to accept an alternative plan for Gaza’s recovery, including aid and support from their countries.
“Egypt and Jordan have historically been engaged in the Palestinian cause. They must be an integral part of any solution,” said the Egyptian Centre for Thinking and Strategic Studies, a think tank allied with the government. Director Khaled Okasha said. “But it’s not what Trump is proposing.”
Fatima Abdulkarim contributed to the report from Ramallah on the West Bank.
