The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia wants to become the next Arab state to normalize relations with Israel, according to reports in Israeli media on Tuesday.
As US officials visited Riyadh on Tuesday, Saudi Foreign Minister Abdel al-Jubeir reportedly told senior American Jewish leaders that normalization would happen eventually, although it would take a while to happen.
According to the report, the visiting representatives were also told by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the power behind the Saudi throne, that the kingdom had three main demands from Washington prior to joining the so-called Abraham Accords peace deal, including a formalized US-Saudi alliance; an equivalent amount of US weapons procurement to being in the NATO alliance; and approval of a small Saudi civil nuclear power program.
Notably, Saudi demands did not seem to include anything regarding Palestinian Arabs, for whom the Abraham Accords were ostensibly signed. At the time, many feared the imminent annexation of large parts of the Jordan Valley in the West Bank by Israel, whose military governs the Palestinian-majority area.
The Saudi demands come at a time when relations with Washington are at a nadir, even as the Biden administration looks to Riyadh for help with gas prices and with opposing Iran, the kingdom’s major regional rival.
US President Joe Biden has criticized the Saudi war in Yemen, limiting US weapons sales to defense arms, and published declassified documents alleging bin Salman was involved in the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a dissident Turkish-Saudi journalist, in 2019. However, last month, the White House moved to give bin Salman immunity from prosecution for the murder.
Earlier this year, the Saudis joined other members of the OPEC oil cartel in cutting petroleum production at a time when Washington was demanding it be increased in order to compensate for the Western boycott of Russian energy exports.
Other Arab states with normalized diplomatic relations with Israel include Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Sudan, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, the last four of which did so in 2020 as part of the Abraham Accords. US diplomacy helped grease the wheels of all of them.
Rumors of secret talks have persisted for years, including claims that bin Salman has held secret meetings with then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Cooperation between them is not unknown, including when Saudi officials looked the other way in 1981 as Israeli strike aircraft crossed Saudi territory to bomb an incomplete nuclear reactor built by Iraq, which at the time was the mutual enemy of Riyadh, Tel Aviv and Tehran.
In March, bin Salman said he does not see Israel as an “enemy,” telling the US magazine “The Atlantic” that one day the two countries might become friends.
“We have to solve some issues before we get to that,” he said. “For us, we hope that the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is solved.”