Saudi Arabia has appointed its first envoy to the Palestinian administration in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, a move widely seen as linked to US-led efforts to build diplomatic ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel.
The Saudi envoy to Jordan, Nayef Al-Sudairi, will also serve as “nonresident ambassador to the State of Palestine,” the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced Saturday in a brief statement. Saudi Arabia recognizes Palestinian statehood in the entire West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
The announcement comes amid intensified efforts by the United States to establish formal relations for the first time between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
It also followed speculation in Israel that Saudi Arabia – which has long opposed establishing formal ties until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved – might be willing to do so without Israel giving up on the Palestinians. more autonomy.
“It’s kind of a check box,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in an interview broadcast last week. “You have to check it to say you’re doing it.”
But Saudi and Palestinian analysts said the appointment of Ambassador Al-Sudairi showed Riyadh was serious about securing better treatment for Palestinians.
“This is the Saudi way of communicating something,” said Abdulaziz Alghashian, a Saudi expert on Riyadh’s relations with Israel. “They say it’s a little more than a check in a box.”
The Saudi ambassador to Jordan has long informally handled the Palestinian file, in practice if not in name. The formal recognition of that dual role is “a reaction to the perception in Israeli circles that the Saudis don’t really care about the Palestinians,” said Mr. Alghashian, who is based in Riyadh.
If a deal is reached next year, it is expected to involve a three-way agreement in which the United States gives Riyadh more military support and aid for a civilian nuclear program, and Israel offering the Palestinians some kind of concession.
On Sunday, the Israeli government, dominated by lawmakers who oppose Palestinian sovereignty, continued to downplay the relevance of the Palestinian side of the negotiations.
Eli Cohen, the Israeli foreign minister, said on Sunday in a radio interview that announcement is more symbolic. “The Saudis want to send a message to the Palestinians that they have not been forgotten,” Mr. Cohen said. But in reality, “the Palestinian issue is not the main issue within the talks,” he added.
But Palestinians took heart from the announcement – especially its insistence that the ambassador will also serve, at least in name, as consul general in Jerusalem. Israel has controlled all of Jerusalem since 1967 and declared the city its undivided capital, but Palestinians hope that at least part of it will serve as the capital of a Palestinian state.
The appointment of a consul there is seen as support for Palestinian aspirations, said Ibrahim Dalalsha, director of the Horizon Center, a Palestinian research group in Ramallah, West Bank.
“On a deeper level, this is seen from a Palestinian perspective as a message that the Saudis will not abandon the Palestinians in their consultations with the US and Israel on a possible normalization deal,” he said.
But Mr. Cohen, the Israeli foreign minister, said Israel would not allow Saudi Arabia to open a Palestinian consulate in Jerusalem.
“We don’t allow countries to open consulates” with Palestinians in Jerusalem, he said. “It’s not compatible with us.”
Israel established diplomatic relations in 2020 with three Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates, ending years of isolation in the Arab world and leading to speculation that Saudi Arabia would be next. The Biden administration has now made the Saudi-Israeli relationship one of its main foreign policy goals.