Palestinians warm by the fire in the rubble of destroyed buildings in the Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on November 16, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

The story so far:

Saudi Arabia hosted a summit of leaders from Arab and Islamic countries last week to discuss the Palestine question. The summit demanded an immediate end to Israel’s military aggression on Gaza and Lebanon.

What did leaders say?

In their closing statement, the leaders condemned the Israeli military’s “shocking and horrific crimes”, its “crime of genocide”, and “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza, and called for an “independent, credible” international committee to investigate these crimes. It urged for measures to end the Israeli occupation and “establish an independent, sovereign Palestinian state on the lines of June 4, 1967, with occupied Al-Quds [Jerusalem] as its capital, based on the two-state solution, and in accordance with the approved references and the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002.”

What is the significance of the summit?

In recent years, Arab countries had shown a willingness to improve or even normalise ties with Israel bypassing the Palestine question, in violation of the spirit of the Arab Peace Initiative, which promised recognition to Israel in return for the creation of a Palestine state. In 2020, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan normalised ties with Israel in an agreement called the Abraham Accords. In the past, Arab-Israel normalisation — Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994 — came with some Israeli compromises. Israel signed the Framework for Peace in the Middle East with Egypt in 1979 (following the Camp David Agreement), agreeing to establish an autonomous Palestinian self-governing authority in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and the Israel-Jordan agreement (the Wadi Araba Treaty) following the 1993 Oslo Agreement, which laid the foundations of the Palestine National Authority.

But when the Abraham Accords were signed, the Palestinians got nothing. After the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack and Israel’s retaliatory war on Gaza (and the West Bank), Arabs condemned the Israeli actions but stopped short of provoking the Jewish state. However, their unease and anger over the war Israel was carrying out were on display. In the Riyadh summit, they came together and expressed their collective anger and sent a message to both Israel and the U.S. that resolving the Palestine question is key to peace in West Asia.

Where do Saudi-Israel ties stand?

In September 2023, Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi Crown Prince, and Prime Minister, said the kingdom was in an advanced stage of finalising a normalisation agreement with Israel. For both the U.S. and Israel, an agreement with Saudi Arabia was the logical next step of the normalisation process. Arab countries were also increasingly wary of Iran and they seemed ready to bolster ties with Israel and build a joint defensive shield against potential Iranian threats. Then came the October 7 attack, and Israel’s war on Gaza.  Israel’s indiscriminate use of power, which has destroyed much of Gaza, has triggered strong anti-Israel sentiments in the Arab Street. Saudi Arabia and the UAE see the Hamas brand of political Islam as a threat to their monarchical systems. But they cannot ignore the mood in the Arab Street and West Asia, which is predominantly anti-Israel and pro-Palestine. A few months after the war, the Saudis said any future agreement with Israel should be linked to resolving the Palestine issue.

On September 18, Crown Prince Mohammed said, “The kingdom will not cease its tireless efforts to establish an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and we affirm that the kingdom will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel without one.” At the opening of the Riyadh summit, MBS, as Prince Mohammed is popularly known, said Israel was committing “genocide” in Gaza, in his harshest criticism of the war. This points to a steady deterioration in Saudi-Israel ties over the past year.

Will the Arabs join the war?

Very unlikely. The last time an Arab country attacked Israel was in 1973 when Egypt, along with Syria, launched a surprise offensive in Sinai and Golan, Egyptian and Syrian territories, respectively, that were captured by Israel in 1967. Egypt launched the attack to get its territory back, not for the Palestinians. Ever since, peace between Israel and Arab states prevailed, irrespective of Israel’s military occupation of the Palestinian territories. That status quo is unlikely to change as no Arab country has the stomach to go to war against Israel. But before the October 7 attack, Arabs were moving closer to formalising their relationship with the Jewish state — that push has now been derailed. Now, even the UAE, which had close ties with Israel, says it “is not ready to support the day after the war in Gaza without the establishment of a Palestinian state”. Arab countries have also entered into a detente with Iran, bringing their decades-long rivalry with the Shia state to a tactical halt.

This signals a subtle realignment in West Asia’s strategic landscape. Before October 7, the Gulf Arabs and Iran were at loggerheads with each other. The U.S. wanted to bring Israel and the Gulf Arabs, the two pillars of its West Asia policy, closer to each other. Israel had proposed a joint defensive alliance against Iran, with America’s blessing. The Palestine issue had been pushed to the sidelines of the region. Now, the Palestine issue is back at the centre. Iran and the Arabs have learned to co-exist, at least for now. And the Arab-Israel normalisation process has been shelved.