BICOM

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman has reaffirmed his support for the Palestinian cause, after his son and heir Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said Israelis have a right to live in their own land.

Yesterday, King Salman stressed “the Kingdom’s steadfast position towards the Palestinian issue and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people to an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital”. The King also emphasised the need to advance the peace process in a phone call with US President Donald Trump on Monday night.

It followed an interview by the Crown Prince with US magazine The Atlantic, published on Monday, in which he was asked by the magazine’s editor Jeffrey Goldberg if he believes the Jewish people have a right to a nation-state in at least part of their ancestral homeland. The Crown Prince responded that he “believe[d] the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land. But we have to have a peace agreement to assure the stability for everyone and to have normal relations”.

When asked if the threat from Iran is helping to bring Israel and Saudi Arabia together, the Crown Prince said: “There are a lot of interests we share with Israel and if there is peace, there would be a lot of interest between Israel and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and countries like Egypt and Jordan.”

Crown Prince Mohammed also contended that the Middle East had been divided into a dichotomy of two camps, which he labelled the “triangle of evil” consisting of Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Sunni terror groups and an alliance of self-described moderate states that includes Jordan, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Oman.

Commenting on The Atlantic interview in the same magazine, former US State Department official and negotiator Dennis Ross said: “Moderate Arab leaders have spoken of the reality of Israel’s existence, but acknowledgement of any sort of ‘right’ to Jewish ancestral land has been a red line no leader has crossed until now.”

Saudi Arabia does not recognise Israel. It has maintained that normalising relations depends on Israeli withdrawal from lands captured in the 1967 Six-Day War as envisioned in the Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative. However, behind the scenes there have been numerous examples of a gradual thaw in hostility due to perceived shared concerns, notably the threat of Iran.