A deal would be a big win for Israel - and Joe Biden too - but there are minefields to clear to get there

US President Joe Biden shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as they meet on the sidelines of the 78th United Nations General Assembly in New York City on September 20, 2023.

Listening this week to the leaders of Israel and Saudi Arabia, you might have thought a breakthrough between the longtime enemies was at hand, and that the American president was making it happen.

Speaking at the UN General Assembly on Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was "at the cusp" of a "dramatic breakthrough: an historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia." He predicted that such a deal would "encourage a broader reconciliation between Judaism and Islam, between Jerusalem and Mecca, between the descendants of Issac and the descendants of Ishmael."That same day, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia told Fox News that “every day, we get closer” to normalization with Israel.

Speaking after a meeting with Netanyahu on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly sessions in New York, Biden quipped, “If you and I 10 years ago were talking about normalization with Saudi Arabia, I think we’d look at each other, like, Who’s been drinking what?”

“The amount of effort and energy the administration is spending on this leads me to believe that we're probably closer than ever to some agreement,” Aaron David Miller, a veteran Mideast peace negotiator now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told The Messenger. “But given the fact that five years ago, the chances were near zero, there's still a long way to go.”

That’s because of a harsh political reality: a blockbuster Saudi-Israel deal will require compromises that Netanyahu and Biden’s closest political allies find unacceptable.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the liberal Mideast peace lobbying group, J Street, told The Messenger, “A lot of triple bank shots have to happen in just the right way to make the final thing happen.”

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Since Israel's founding in 1948, Saudi Arabia has refused to recognize the Jewish state. The Saudis backed Arab countries in their early wars with Israel and strongly supported Palestinian independence. More recently, they have supported the Palestinian Authority financially and said that recognition of Israel was contingent on the establishment of a fully independent Palestinian state.

But much has changed. Saudi Arabia has cut its support for the Palestinian Authority to zero amid allegations of the Authority’s corruption and incompetence. The Crown Prince, who is the kingdom’s de facto ruler, has made it repeatedly clear that the Palestinian issue is not nearly the priority for him that it was for his predecessors.

In the meantime, Saudi Arabia and Israel are increasingly on the same page when it comes to regional issues, particularly when it comes to their mutual foe: Iran. It’s an open secret that Israel and Saudi Arabia have shared intelligence and coordinated on security issues. And business ties between the two countries have increased as well.

Still, there are limits to how far the Saudis have been willing to go. Under Donald Trump’s administration, the U.S. helped negotiate the “Abraham Accords,” a series of normalization deals between Israel and Arab countries including the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan. But despite lobbying by Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, the Saudis chose not to join.

For Israel, Saudi Arabia is “the big enchilada,” said Shira Efron, director of research at the Israel Policy Forum. “Everything follows from that.”

Analysts have noted that in addition to the direct security and economic benefits of normalizing relations with the Arab World’s largest economy, a deal with Saudi Arabia could also open the door to deals with major Muslim-majority countries farther afield, such as Indonesia and Malaysia.

“It’s a conceptual Berlin Wall,” David Makovsky, an expert on Arab-Israeli relations at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told The Messenger. He added that it’s “something Israel has wanted for 75 years.”

Bibi’s tough sell

As much as Netanyahu might this deal for his political legacy, the question is what he’ll surrender to get it. We don’t yet know what the Saudis’ price will be for normalization, but they are unlikely to let Netanyahu get away without compromises on the Palestinian issue.

For one thing, Saudi leaders, while not exactly democrats, are surely aware of how unpopular normalization with Israel will be in their own country and in the wider Muslim world. ]

“These are very repressive, monarchical regimes but they do still have to factor public sentiment into some of their decisions sometimes,” Yousef Munayyer, an analyst of Palestinian affairs and fellow at the Arab Center, told The Messenger.

For another, while Crown Prince Bin Salman may not care much about the Palestinian issue, his father clearly does. King Salman is still technically the Saudi head of state, and he has reportedly interceded to ensure that any deal include “significant concessions” to the Palestinians.

What those concessions might be isn’t clear. Axios reported that Palestinian leaders had provided a list of demands to Saudi Arabia including the transfer of some land in the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority, a reopening of the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem–which Trump closed in 2019 and which Biden has not reopened despite pledging to do so–and a resumption of Saudi funding to their government.

Ben-Ami told The Messenger that when it comes to pressuring Israel to reengage with the Palestinians, “the United States has very few carrots left in the bag to offer Israel.”

Normalization with Saudi Arabia would be a significant carrot.

The problem is that the far-right parties that make up Netanyahu’s current coalition aren’t interested in any carrots. Finance Minister Bazalel Smotrich, himself a West Bank settler, has vowed that Israel will make no concessions to the Palestinians as part of any deal with Saudi Arabia.

“Smotrich would rather jump off the Azrieli Tower than agree to land transfers,” said Makovsky, referring to a well-known Tel Aviv skyscraper.

For all these reasons, many analysts say that a deal that includes meaningful moves on Israel-Palestinian issues would likely bring down the current Israeli government--an outcome the Biden White House might actually welcome. The current American administration would plainly prefer to deal with an Israeli coalition that did not include openly racist parties with links to anti-Arab terrorism.

Ben-Ami suggested that the Saudi deal had the potential to be an “incentive for a reshaping of the [Israeli] government." In other words, Netanyahu could theoretically use normalization to bring more mainstream factions into his coalition and ditch the right-wing extremists who have hobbled much of his political agenda.

The idea that Netanyahu would blow up his coalition for a Saudi deal may seem far-fetched, but the prospect has influential backers in Washington. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who has interviewed Biden about the deal and revealed much of the administration’s thinking about it in his recent columns, said at a recent event hosted by the Israel Policy Forum, “I'm focused on one thing. How do you destroy this [Israeli] cabinet? By putting terms on the table that will blow it up. Everything else follows from that.”

Headwinds on the hill

The Saudi-Israel deal may also face trouble on Capitol Hill.

Recent reporting has suggested that as part of the agreement, the U.S. is discussing helping Saudi Arabia develop a civilian nuclear energy program as well as security guarantees modeled on U.S. defense pacts with allies including Japan and South Korea.

Both those terms would require congressional approval–a defense treaty would require a two-thirds senate majority. That would be a very tough sell, particularly among congressional Democrats who have been increasingly critical of U.S. support for Saudi Arabia on a range of issues including the kingdom’s human rights record, the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the brutal war in Yemen, and oil production cuts.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a leading Democratic voice on foreign affairs who normally defends the Biden administration’s policies, recently said he would “have to be sold on” this deal, and that extending security guarantees to Saudi Arabia would result in “our nation getting further bogged down into Middle East military and political battles.”

And anyone with concerns about aiding a Saudi nuclear program probably wasn’t reassured by Bin Salman’s interview with Fox News this week, in which he said that if Iran were to acquire a nuclear weapon, “We will have to get one.”

Some U.S. policymakers might be swayed if the agreement could be shown to meaningfully advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, but polls show Israel isn’t the priority for American voters that it once was, and Netanyahu is particularly unpopular among Democrats. Congressional Republicans might, in some circumstances, be more likely to back a meaningfully “pro-Israel” measure, but perhaps less so when it would mean handing the Biden administration a foreign policy victory heading into an election year.

All of which makes it all the more noteworthy that Biden administration officials keep discussing the agreement publicly and floating what appear to be trial balloons about its terms in the press. Whether motivated by the desire to stabilize the Middle East, advance the moribund peace process, one-up one of Trump’s notable foreign policy legacies, or keep the Saudis in the U.S. camp rather than China’s, the administration plainly views this as a priority.

But when it comes to Mideast diplomacy, healthy skepticism is always in order.

Miller, a veteran of peace negotiations in four presidential administrations, notes that while the administration clearly thinks a breakthrough is in sight, “I can't tell you how many times we had that same feeling.”

Joshua Keating

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