The opportunity for signing a US-brokered peace treaty between Israel and Saudi Arabia will remain only for six to nine months, as the likelihood of its realization will fade with the approach of the elections in the United States set for November 2024, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the talks on the issue
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 09th August, 2023) The opportunity for signing a US-brokered peace treaty between Israel and Saudi Arabia will remain only for six to nine months, as the likelihood of its realization will fade with the approach of the elections in the United States set for November 2024, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the talks on the issue.
In June, a number of news outlets reported that the US government was making active attempts to normalize Israeli-Saudi relations. Riyadh, for its part, demands that Washington provide it with civilian nuclear capacity, sign a defense agreement on security guarantees and remove some restrictions on the supply of US weapons to Saudi Arabia, the reports said.
The people close to the discussions believe it would be hard for Riyadh and Washington to agree on Saudi nuclear and security demands, since their promotion would require the approval of the US Congress that is skeptical on the issue. Moreover, Israel may not agree to make any concessions on the Palestinian issue Saudi Arabia is expected to insist on, the report said.
In addition, an Israeli official told the Financial Times that the recent increase in Washington's interaction with Riyadh might have been just a response to the signing of the Chinese-brokered deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran in March, as a result of which the two countries resumed diplomatic relations severed in 2016.
"I do think the Saudis are going to be forced to make a choice between the US and China," the Israeli official told the newspaper, adding that "there is no chance that they will get a defence treaty ... without taking a clear stance on the US side."
Saudi Arabia has never recognized the state of Israel. The countries have no diplomatic ties and none of the Israeli ministers has ever visited Saudi Arabia, even for international conferences.
The US launched a process to normalize relations between Israel and the Arab world in 2020. As a result of these efforts, in September 2020, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed a set of documents known as the Abraham Accords, and were joined by Morocco in December of that year. In January 2021, Sudan also signed the declarative section of the Accords, but did not sign the relevant document with Israel, unlike other states, due to disagreements between the Sudanese military and civilian leadership over the issue.
