US plans have rendered diplomatic ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia unlikely for the time being. Yet Riyadh and Washington have their own roadmaps. Meanwhile, Palestinians continue to bear the brunt.
Polarizing propositions on the future of Palestinians from Gaza seem to be running at a clip since US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Washington last week.
On Monday, Trump clarified that Palestinians wouldn’t be allowed to return to the Gaza Strip if his plans to procure and rebuild the war-battered Gaza Strip come true.
“They’re going to have much better housing … in communities a little bit away from where they are, where all of this danger is,” Trump told the US broadcaster Fox News.
Trump would like to see regional neighbors such as Egypt and Jordan as the main host countries for around 2 million Palestinians from Gaza.
Legal experts however say that expelling Palestinians from Gaza violates international law, while the United Nations has warned of “ethnic cleansing.”
Another controversial idea was put forward by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He recently told the Israeli broadcaster Channel 14 that “the Saudis can create a Palestinian state in Saudi Arabia, they have a lot of land over there.”
In turn, not only Egypt and Jordan but also Saudi Arabia reiterated that taking in Palestinians from Gaza is not going to happen.
Unilateral Arab rejection
“The kingdom affirms that the Palestinian people have a right to their land, and they are not intruders or immigrants to it who can be expelled whenever the brutal Israeli occupation wishes,” Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry posted on X.
The Saudi Foreign Ministry also highlighted that “the right of the Palestinian People will remain firmly established and no one will be able to take it away from them no matter how long it takes.”
Such sharply voiced comments mark a 180 degreee turnaround from the diplomatic friendship between the US and Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS, during Trump’s first term from 2017 and 2021.
“In 2017, a lot of hope was placed in Trump, especially by MBS, who was still consolidating his power,” Sebastian Sons, senior researcher for the Bonn-based think tank Center for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient.
In the following years, political and economic ties between the two countries intensified.
However, while Trump successfully brokered diplomatic ties — dubbed Abraham Accords — between Israel and Sudan, Bahrain, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, he didn’t clinch the deal with Saudi Arabia before he was succeeded by US President Joe Biden.
US-negotiations between Israel and Saudi Arabia continued until the Hamas terror attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which triggered the war in Gaza.
Meanwhile, 15 months on and with Trump once more being in office, much has changed.
