Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
Riyadh: US magazine The Atlantic has reported that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman expressed a lack of personal concern for the “Palestinian issue” during a conversation with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in January. The two leaders reportedly discussed the possibility of normalising relations with Israel amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
According to the report, Blinken asked whether Saudi Arabia would tolerate periodic Israeli reentries into Gaza as part of a potential normalisation agreement. The crown prince purportedly responded, “They can come back in six months, a year, but not on the back end of my signing something like this.”
He added, “Seventy percent of my population is younger than me. For most of them, they never really knew much about the Palestinian issue. And so they’re being introduced to it for the first time through this conflict. It’s a huge problem. Do I care personally about the Palestinian issue? I don’t, but my people do, so I need to make sure this is meaningful.”
A Saudi official, however, has described this account of the conversation as “incorrect.”
Despite the new reported comments, Mohammed bin Salman has in the past publicly stated that Saudi Arabia will not normalise relations with Israel without the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
“The Kingdom will not cease its diligent efforts to establish an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital,” he said at a recent annual address before the Shura Council in Riyadh.
“We confirm that Saudi Arabia will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel until that goal is achieved.”
