The visit of the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, to Saudi Arabia, this Monday, 29, became an important step in the formalization of a peace agreement between the Saudi kingdom and Israel. The alliance, seen as unfeasible a few decades ago, is close to becoming a reality, in Blinken’s opinion.
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“The work that Saudi Arabia and the United States have done together in terms of our own agreements, I think, is potentially very close to completion,” the secretary of state said, according to AFP.
The idea of union gained even more strength with the latest feud between Israel and Iran, the current enemy of both countries. Saudi Arabia has already admitted that it helped Israel defend against the more than 300 projectiles launched by Iran into Israeli territory on the 13th.
The outcome of the negotiations is linked to the end of the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. For Saudi Arabia, negotiations for a Palestinian state would definitively seal a peace pact with Israel.
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“But then, to move forward with normalization, two things will be needed: calm in Gaza and a credible path to a Palestinian state,” Blinken said during a World Economic Forum meeting in Riyadh.
Not even the accusation against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has served to undermine President Joe Biden’s efforts to seal friendly ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Biden was in Riyadh in 2022 and, despite having pressed Salman about the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, executed and dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, in 2018, he maintained a cordial visit.
The agenda was guided by common themes, with issues such as energy, defense and cybersecurity.
Symbolic importance of an agreement
In the Middle East chess, Israel may end the conflict with the terrorist group even earlier than predicted by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
On the other hand, it is on the verge of allying itself, from a diplomatic, commercial and military point of view, with its biggest Iranian rival, which finances terrorist groups on the border with Israel.
In this sense, it would be a defeat for Hamas, which, with the attacks of October 7, aimed precisely to inflame the Arab world, including the Saudi government, into a hostile wave that would once again isolate Israel, after the Abraham Accords, from 2020. On that occasion, the Jewish country established diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently stated that a “historic peace agreement” with Saudi Arabia would be of great importance for Israel, due to Saudi’s political and economic relevance. As well, he continued, because of the symbolic importance of the Saudi country in the Arab and Islamic world.
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Precisely for this reason, adds the BBC, an approach would frustrate all Iranian plans, included in the Hamas and Hezbollah attacks on Israel.
The day after the terrorist group’s invasion in October, Ismail Haniya, head of Hamas’s political office, stated that agreements between other Arab countries and Israel “cannot resolve this conflict.”
Talks between Saudis and Israelis were advanced at the time. On September 26, Israel’s Minister of Tourism, Haim Katz, arrived in Saudi Arabia, the first public visit by an Israeli minister to the kingdom.
Hezbollah also admitted that the Hamas attack became an attempt to distance Israel from the Saudis, saying that it was done to remember that “the Palestinian problem is a living issue that will not die until victory and liberation.”
