Saudis put Israel deal on hold amid war, engage with Iran
Saudi Arabia is putting US-backed plans to normalize ties with Israel on ice, two sources familiar with Riyadh’s thinking said, signaling a rapid rethinking of its foreign policy priorities as war escalates between Israel and Palestinian resistance group Hamas.
The conflict has also pushed the kingdom to engage with Iran. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – known as MBS – took his first phone call from Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi as Riyadh tries to prevent a broader surge in violence across the region, Reuters reported.
The two sources told Reuters there would be a delay in the US-backed talks on normalization with Israel that was a key step for the kingdom to secure what Riyadh considers the real prize of a US defense pact in exchange.
A source familiar with the discussions also told AFP that “Saudi Arabia has decided to pause discussion on possible normalization and has informed US officials.”
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told a White House briefing this week that the normalization effort was “not on hold,” but said the focus was on other immediate challenges.
US demand rejected
The first source familiar with Saudi thinking said Washington had pressed Riyadh this week to condemn the Hamas attack but said Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan pushed back. A US source familiar with the issue confirmed this.
Until Hamas sparked a war on Oct. 7 by launching a devastating attack on Israel, both Israeli and Saudi leaders had been saying they were moving steadily towards a normalization deal.
The first source familiar with Riyadh’s thinking told Reuters that talks could not be continued for now and the issue of Israeli concessions for the Palestinians would need to be a bigger priority when discussions resumed – a comment that indicates Riyadh has not abandoned the idea.
Hamas launched the large-scale attack on Israel on October 7 that killed 1,300 people, sparking a retaliatory bombing campaign, which Gaza authorities say have killed more than 2,200, a quarter of them children, and wounded nearly 10,000.
Engagement with Iran
The regional conflict has also prompted the Saudi crown prince and Iran’s president to speak for the first time after a Chinese-brokered initiative prompted the two Persian Gulf states to re-establish diplomatic ties in March after seven years of severed ties.
On Thursday, Saudi state media reported that MBS had discussed “the current military situation in Gaza and its environs” with President Raisi.
A Saudi statement said the crown prince told Raisi, “The kingdom is exerting maximum effort to engage with all international and regional parties to halt the ongoing escalation,” underlining Riyadh’s move to contain the crisis. A senior Iranian official told Reuters the 45-minute call aimed to support “Palestine and prevent the spread of war in the region.”
On Friday, Saudi Arabia denounced the displacement of Palestinians within Gaza and attacks on “defenseless civilians,” its strongest language criticizing Israel since the war broke out. On Saturday, thousands of Palestinians fled the north of the Gaza Strip from the path of an expected Israeli ground assault, while Israel pounded the area with more air strikes and said it would keep two roads open to let people escape.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said it had received an Israeli order to evacuate the hospital by 4:00 pm, but would not do so because it had a humanitarian duty to keep providing services to the sick and wounded.
In Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, where Israeli planes struck a four-story building overnight, neighbors rushed to rescue people.
The UN estimated that tens of thousands of Palestinians headed south from northern Gaza after the Israeli order on Friday, adding to 400,000 Gazans already displaced earlier in the week. “We need immediate humanitarian access throughout Gaza, so that we can get fuel, food and water to everyone in need,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday. “Even wars have rules.”
The US has firmly backed its ally Israel, but has called on it to protect civilians.
Pro-Palestinian rallies
Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched in central London on Saturday, calling for an end to Israel’s military action in the Gaza Strip.
Protesters, many of them waving Palestinian flags and signs saying, “Free Palestine,” gathered close to Oxford Circus from where they planned to head to Downing Street, the official residence and office of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Chants were aimed at the governments of Britain and the US for supporting Israel. Earlier on Saturday, the headquarters of the BBC broadcaster, which is located close to the start of the march, was daubed in red paint.
Also, hundreds of people gathered in Times Square in New York on Friday to protest the weeklong Israeli bombardment of Gaza, waving Palestinian flags and antiwar banners as more than 100 police officers and scores of television cameras looked on, nytimes.com reported.
The gathering, and a rally Friday evening in Brooklyn for Jews supporting Palestinians, might once have been considered unremarkable. But in the days leading up to the daytime protest, rumors about it sent a wave of anxiety through New York. The city has been stricken by grief and living on edge since the incursion and the Israeli response, which together have killed thousands of civilians.
At the UN, the Palestinian United Nations envoy appealed to Guterres on Friday to do more to stop a “crime against humanity” by Israel, which has warned nearly half of the population of the Gaza Strip to relocate as it plans an assault.
Caution against ‘a huge earthquake’
Ahead of a potential Israeli ground invasion of the Palestinian coastal territory, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian called on Israel to stop its attacks on Gaza, warning that the war might expand to other parts of the Middle East and that would make Israel suffer “a huge earthquake,” AP reported.
Amir-Abdollahian told reporters in Beirut that Lebanon’s Hezbollah group has taken all the scenarios of a war into consideration and Israel should stop its attacks on Gaza as soon as possible. He stressed that the Islamic Republic would continue to take all necessary diplomatic measures to stop the Israeli atrocities and the blockade of Gaza.
The top Iranian diplomat added that in any case, the resistance is to decide, and that in the case of a cease-fire, it is the resistance that will propose its conditions. Hezbollah fighters have been on full alert along Lebanon’s border following last Saturday’s attack. Amir-Abdollahian said he met Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who briefed him on the group’s conditions in Lebanon. He said: “I want to warn the war criminals and those who support this entity before it’s too late to stop the crimes against civilians in Gaza, because it might be too late in few hours.”