Speaking to the Saudi English-language newspaper Al Arabiya, last month Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made his case for peace between Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Such a peace, he explained, would be “a quantum leap for overall peace between Israel and the Arab word,” which would change the Middle East “in ways that are unimaginable.”
Netanyahu understated the point. As the custodian of Islam’s most sacred mosques in Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia is not only the most important Arab state—it is the most important state in the broader Muslim world. Saudi-Israeli peace would thus not only end the Arab world’s conflict with Israel; it would go a long way toward ending the Islamic world’s near-systemic rejection of the modern Jewish state since its incipience.
The 2020 Abraham Accords, which formed the framework for the U.S.-brokered peace among Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco, constituted a paradigm shift. Israel’s previous peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan were peaces in name only because both Egypt and Jordan refused to normalize their ties with Israel and accept Israel’s right to exist until after Israel made a separate peace with the Palestinians.
As the name connotes, the Abraham Accords are predicated upon a true acknowledgment that Israel is indigenous and organic to the Middle East. The Jewish state is the rightful owner of the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, just as the Arab states of the Middle East are the rightful heirs of the lands of Abraham’s son Ishmael. Israel’s legitimacy isn’t contingent; it is self-evident.
Netanyahu’s expressed hope that Saudi Arabia will enter the Abraham Accords did not fall on deaf ears. In November, a delegation organized by the Jewish Institute for National Security in America, comprised of retired senior U.S. national security officials, visited Saudi Arabia. In early January, JINSA senior fellow John Hannah published a report on the delegation’s findings. Hannah wrote that the Saudis are ready to make peace with Israel, and their willingness to do so is not contingent on Israel making territorial concessions to the Palestinians. It is contingent, rather, on the U.S. fully embracing Saudi Arabia as an ally.
Hannah quoted a senior Saudi official as follows:
It makes sense for us to normalize with Israel. We share the same threats, enemies, and allies. But it will be difficult because for 50 years, we’ve filled out people’s heads with hatred of Israel. We still have extremists. They will attack us. The Iranians will stir up instability. Our economy could suffer. Our standing as the leader of the Islamic world could suffer. The risks are real. We’re prepared to take them, but we need several things from the United States first to help us balance the risks.
Hannah then set out the three Saudi officials’ requests from the U.S., which, if met, would break the impasse and lead to peace.
First: The Saudis are asking for a written agreement with the U.S. that sets out the U.S. commitment to Saudi security and defines America’s strategic partnership with the kingdom.
Second: Despite Qatar’s partnership with Iran and sponsorship of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, last March the Biden administration designated Qatar as a major non-NATO ally. The Saudis are asking for a similar designation.
Third: The Saudis are asking for the U.S. to develop civil nuclear energy with them.
According to Hannah’s reporting, the Saudis said they are willing to sign a deal with Israel immediately after the U.S. closes such a deal with them.
Hannah read his interlocutors’ stipulated conditions as an opening bargaining bid, and not as an ultimatum.
Most historians assert that the Arab-Israeli conflict began on May 15, 1948, the day of Israel’s birth. But the real starting date was February 14, 1945. That day, in a meeting aboard the U.S.S. Quincy,then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Saudi leader Ibn Saud set out the terms for the postwar U.S.-Saudi partnership. At the time, Jewish Holocaust survivors were stranded at displaced persons camps throughout Europe. The U.S. public rallied to their side and demanded they be permitted to immigrate to the Land of Israel.
According to the State Department historian’s minutes from the meeting, Ibn Saud insisted there could be no Arab acceptance of Jews in the Land of Israel. He said, “the Arabs and the Jews could never cooperate, neither in Palestine, nor in any other country.”
Arabs, Ibn Saud said, “would choose to die rather than yield their land to the Jews.”
Roosevelt, for his part, assured Ibn Saud “that he would do nothing to assist the Jews against the Arabs and would make no move hostile to the Arab people.”
Generations of U.S. presidents kept Roosevelt’s word. They accepted that Arab rejection of the Jews was legitimate, and that Jewish rights were, at best, contingent on Arab acceptance. The Trump administration was the first to depart from that position—and it did so only after the Arabs themselves abandoned it. Had the Emiratis not made clear they were unwilling to subordinate their national interest of peace with Israel to the Palestinians’ intransigence, even President Trump likely would have continued to push Netanyahu to accept Palestinian demands.
Now, Ibn Saud’s grandchildren are themselves willing to openly accept Israel, without preconditions. And the question is whether Joe Biden will act as Donald Trump did, and follow their lead.
Depressingly, it appears the Biden administration is not willing to walk away from the FDR-Ibn Saud deal, even though maintaining it alienates Ibn Saud’s very heirs. Last week, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken participated in a summit of the Abraham Accords member states in Abu Dhabi. Blinken and other senior officials continued their efforts to stand the Abraham Accords on their head by peddling the outmoded “Palestinians first” paradigm, which dominated the Arab world’s fraught relations with Israel until 2020. Blinken, State Department Counselor Derek Chollet, and State Department Spokesman Ned Price all made clear that the U.S. used its presence in Abu Dhabi to divert the discussions away from collective action against Iran and economic cooperation with Israel, and toward Palestinian grievances. Chollet said the U.S. is “fully supportive of the Palestinians joining” the Abraham Accords and that the summit “focused on strengthening the Palestinian economy and improving the quality of life of Palestinians.”
While Israel, the Saudis, and the Arab members of the Abraham Accords are focused on blocking Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and becoming a regional hegemon, the Biden administration remains committed—despite its tepid denials—to achieving a nuclear deal, and broader rapprochement, with Iran. Such a deal will provide Iran with the financial means and international legitimacy to become a nuclear-armed regional hegemon that threatens the very existence of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Abraham Accords partners.
In other words, the Biden administration is committed to FDR’s hostile posture on Israel, and opposes the Saudis’ desire to abandon Ibn Saud’s anti-Israel hostility.
The stakes for the U.S. couldn’t be higher. If the Biden administration joins the Abraham Accords signees in their full acceptance of Israel as their brother and partner in the lands of Abraham’s children, it will secure its legacy and America’s posture as the lead superpower in the Middle East for years to come. If it refuses to do so, it will strike a mortal blow to America’s alliance system in the Middle East, reducing U.S. power and influence in the region for years to come.