Biden, in Interview About Push for Saudi-Israel Peace Deal, Omits Palestinian Statehood Issue

President Biden, in a late attempt to advance a Middle East game-changer that could boost his re-election bid, is highlighting efforts to strike a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Yet, would Riyadh, if it’s at all interested, rather wait until after the election?Mr. Biden’s interview over the weekend with Speedy Morman of the New York-based Complex youth media network was swallowed up by the news of the assassination attempt on President Trump’s life a few hours later. In it, the president tweaked his approach to his coveted Saudi deal — including by omitting any reference to Palestinian statehood.While pushing a Saudi deal, Washington has made the establishment of a Palestinian state “a core issue, even though it isn’t,” the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ vice president, Jonathan Schanzer, tells the Sun. For the Saudis, “it’s a secondary priority, and it has been so since they started to talk about this.”In the weekend interview, Mr. Biden called himself a “Zionist,” a word, he said, that is “about whether or not Israel is a safe haven for Jews because of their history of how they’ve been persecuted.”Yet, Mr. Biden also warmly defended his ties with Arab countries. “For example,” he said, “I got a call from the Saudis. They wanna fully recognize Israel.” That statement came to some as a surprise, because official Riyadh never said so explicitly. To make peace with Israel, Mr. Biden added, the Saudis would need to see “if the United States will give them a guarantee that they’ll provide weapons if they are attacked by other Arab nations, that’s the one that is just around the corner, and, and we’d allow them to, we would put a nuclear facility, but we’d operate, our military, we’d operate it so they can move away from fossil fuels.”What was missing from that list? Administration officials have long insisted that for the Saudis and other Mideast allies, a Palestinian state is a sine qua non. Arabs are now “prepared to have a relationship with Israel,” Secretary Blinken said in April, “but you also have an absolute conviction by those countries, one that we share, that this has to include a pathway to a Palestinian state.”Whether Mr. Biden failed to mention the Palestinians by design, or missed it in a brain fog, is beside the point: The omission was glaring. So was evading any direct reference to the elephant in the Mideast room: the Islamic Republic of Iran. When the president spoke of an “Arab nation” that is “just around the corner” from Saudi Arabia, he could have referred to the Houthis, which Riyadh has fought for eight years, or to Iraqi or other enemy militias. Yet, the most likely Saudi foe is Iran, the non-Arab sponsor of those Arab proxies. Shiite Iran is Riyadh’s most formidable strategic enemy. “A lot of people recognize that we need to do something with Iran, but not these weak little bombing runs,” Santor Vance told Fox News Monday night after President Trump named him his running mate. “If you’re gonna punch the Iranians, you punch them hard and that’s what we did when we took out Soleimani,” who at the time led the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps efforts to build up aggressive Mideast alliances. To deal with Iran, Mr. Vance added, America needs to, “one, withdraw their oil money. But you also have to enable the Israelis and the Sunni Arab states to work together and actually provide a counterbalance to Iran.” So is a Trump administration better positioned to facilitate a Saudi-Israeli deal? The Saudis “have always been very reluctant to give a political victory” to Mr. Biden, Mr. Schanzer, a frequent visitor to Riyadh, says. Cutting a major deal in the midst of an American presidential campaign is therefore unlikely, he adds. Mr. Biden initially vowed to turn the Saudi de-facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, into a global “pariah.” He then turned the Kingdom into a major building block of his Mideast policy. In contrast, Mr. Trump’s first foreign trip as president was to Riyadh, and his ties with the Saudis haven’t waned since. After leaving the White House, Mr. Trump partnered with the Saudis on their new golf venture, LIV. A private equity firm headed by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, received a $2 billion investment from a fund controlled by the crown prince. Earlier, Mr. Kushner used his Saudi ties to help facilitate the 2020 Abraham Accords between Israel and Riyadh-allied United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.Since Messrs. Trump and Kushner got the Saudis to tacitly back the Abraham Accords, the natural move for the crown prince, known as MbS, would be to “let them finish the deal,” Mr. Schanzer says. Only a complete disintegration of the Mideast — or a Democratic victory in November — could change these calculations, he adds.

Biden, in Interview About Push for Saudi-Israel Peace Deal, Omits Palestinian Statehood Issue

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