David Morrison
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington in early July, President Trump hosted a dinner for him in the White House. The event began with usual Trump style press conference [1].
At this, Netanyahu revealed that he had sent a letter to the Nobel Prize Committee nominating the President for the Nobel Peace Prize (of which more later).
The press posed two questions to the president, which were very appropriate, given the presence of the Prime Minister of Israel. The first was on the progress of his plan to relocate the population of Gaza and the second on the possibility of a Palestinian State. He made no attempt to answer either of them. Instead, he nominated Benjamin Netanyahu (aka Bibi) as his spokesman on these matters.
The first question was: “Is your Palestinian relocation plan still on the table? Is there a plan?” to which Netanyahu replied, when prompted by Trump:
“I think President Trump had a brilliant vision. It’s called free choice. If people want to stay, they can stay, but if they want to leave, they should be able to leave. It shouldn’t be a prison. It should be an open place and give people a free choice. We’re working with the United States very closely about finding countries that will seek to realize what they always say, that they want to give the Palestinians a better future. And I think we’re getting close to finding several countries, and I think this will give again, the freedom to choose. Palestinians should have it, and I hope that we can secure it close by.”
The president himself added: “we’ve had great cooperation from surrounding, meaning surrounding Israel, surrounding countries, great cooperation from every single one of them.”
Great co-operation there may have been, but there is no evidence whatsoever that any country in the region is willing to facilitate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza. Egypt and Jordan have made it absolutely clear that they will have nothing to do with it.
The second question was: “Do you think that there can be a two-state solution that creates an independent Palestine?”, to which Netanyahu replied, again prompted by Trump:
“I think Palestinians should have all the powers to govern themselves, but none of the powers to threaten us, and that means that certain powers like overall security will always remain in our hands. Now that is a fact and no one in Israel will agree to anything else because we don’t commit suicide. We want life, we cherish life for ourselves, for our neighbors, and I think we can work out a peace between us and the entire Middle East with President Trump’s leadership. And by working together, I think we can establish a very, very broad peace that will include all our neighbors.”
There’s very little doubt that Trump is at one with Netanyahu on this and that the creation of a Palestinian State is no longer US policy. It first became US policy during the presidency of Jimmy Carter, who said in March 1977 that “there has to be a homeland provided for the Palestinian refugees who have suffered for many, many years”.
What Trump did for Netanyahu
In his first term as President, Trump gave Netanyahu almost everything he has ever wished for politically. For example:
- in December 2017, the US recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and, in May 2018, moved the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv
- in August 2018, the US ended financial support for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestine Refugees
- in September 2018, the US cut $25 million of financial support for 6 hospitals for the care of Palestinians in East Jerusalem
- in September 2018, the US closed the PLO office in Washington
- in February 2019, the US ended financial support to the Palestinian Authority
- in March 2019, the US recognised as Israeli sovereign territory the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights (which Israel took over by force in 1967 and has subjected to military occupation ever since)
- in November 2019, the US declared that the 130+ Jewish-only settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Golan Heights are “not per se inconsistent with international law” (in the words of Mike Pompeo, the US Secretary of State at the time)
Trump’s “vision” for Palestinian and Israeli People
On 28th January 2020, Trump launched his 181-page Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People in the White House [2], with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his side. His “vision” didn’t entirely extinguish the possibility of a Palestinian State, but it did involve large areas of the West Bank containing the Jewish settlements (and the Jordan Valley) being annexed by Israel and recognised by the US as Israeli territory, and a Palestinian State being limited to the rest of the West Bank in territory completely surrounded by Israel. For Palestinians, it amounted to the continuation of occupation by Israel in another form. Needless to says Trump hadn’t bothered to consult any Palestinians in drawing it up.
Trump’s scheme was embraced enthusiastically by Netanyahu and he attempted to annex the settlement areas in the West Bank immediately. A Knesset election was to be held a few weeks later on 2nd March 2020, the previous two elections (in 2019) having failed to produce a functional government. Netanyahu obviously hoped that if he succeeded in annexing large areas of the West Bank with the blessing of the US, his chances of forming a stable government after the coming election would be greatly improved. However, for reasons that are unclear, Trump stopped him annexing the settlement areas—and, for the third election in a row, Netanyahu failed to get a workable majority in the Knesset.
President Trump never mentions this “vision” today. When asked if he is in favour of it now, he pointedly refuses to say.
Abraham Accords
The first term Middle East initiative that Trump likes to boast about is the promotion of normalisation between Israel and Arab states. This led to diplomatic agreements between Israel and Bahrain, Morocco and the UAE. These came to be known as the Abraham Accords.
In his letter to the Nobel Committee nominating Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize, Netanyahu heaped praise on these agreements, describing them as “breakthroughs” that had “reshaped the Middle East“, making a “historic advance toward peace, security and regional stability”.
In a similar vein, the present Trump administration recently told the New York Times:
“No amount of revisionist history or gaslighting from liberal activists and Democrat donors can undo President Trump’s historic and transformative Abraham Accords which brought peace to the Middle East. … Only President Trump could have secured these peace deals, and he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for all the work he has done to end wars and conflicts that no other world leader has been able to do.” [3]
That is an extraordinary statement for the Trump administration to make while an unprecedented genocidal war is going on in the Middle East, in which Israel is slaughtering Palestinians in Gaza using US weapons supplied largely for free. Any US President could bring such a war to an end at a stroke by ceasing to supply arms to Israel. Yet this President, who boasts continually about his success in ending wars, refuses to do so. Why?
As for the Abraham Accords themselves, it is absurd to describe them as “peace deals”, since there has never been a war, or any violence at all, between Israel and Bahrain or the UAE. And Morocco has also largely stayed out of the Arab-Israeli conflicts, aside from sending a token force to the 1973 war, more than 50 years ago.
Sweeteners
Furthermore, to get the deal done in the case of Morocco, the US had to provide a substantial sweetener, which had nothing to do with Morocco’s relations with Israel. That was to recognise Morocco’s long-standing claim to Western Sahara, having refused to do so in the past, and to open a US consulate in Dakhla in Western Sahara [4].
The UAE claimed that it also received a sweetener from the US, namely, a promise that there would be no Israeli annexation of West Bank territory as envisaged in Trump’s “vision”. The UAE’s ambassador to Washington, Yousef Al Otaiba, said that “the agreement immediately stops annexation and the potential for violent escalation” and “maintains the viability of a two-state solution as endorsed by the Arab League and international community”.
However, the written agreement [5] between the UAE and Israel makes no mention of a a halt to annexation, and Netanyahu denied it saying [6] that there was “no change in my plans for annexation, with full coordination with the US”.
(Interesting question: if Israel were to annex West Bank territory today, would the UAE pull out of the Abraham Accords?)
Bahrain probably got a sweetener from the US as well—it provides the US with a base for its Fifth Fleet.
(At the outset, Sudan was also a candidate for normalisation with Israel. To pave the way for this, the US removed Sudan from its list of State Sponsors of Terrorism and gave it a $1.2 billion loan to help the Sudan clear its debts to the World Bank. However, the normalisation process could not be completed because of Sudan’s domestic political turmoil.
In August 2023, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen met his Libyan counterpart, Najla al-Mangoush, in Rome to discuss normalisation. News of the meeting made public by Cohen himself provoked riots in Tripoli two nights running and the Libyan Foreign Minister fled the country in fear of her life.)
So, at the end of his first term, Trump had pressured three small Arab states into having diplomatic relation with Israel. To describe this as “historic and transformative” normalisation between Israel and the Arab world, as the present Trump administration has done, is somewhat of an exaggeration.
The Arab Peace Initiative
Over 20 years ago, the Arab League proposed an initiative which would have been historic and transformative, if it had been accepted and implemented by Israel, because it could have led to the normalisation of Israel’s relations with the whole Islamic world, and not just three small Arab states.
This Arab Peace Initiative was proposed by Saudi Arabia to a meeting of the Arab League in Beirut in March 2002. It was endorsed unanimously at the meeting and re-endorsed, again unanimously, at a later meeting of the League in Riyadh in March 2007. It was also endorsed by the 57 Muslim states of the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation (OIC), including Iran.
But Israel never responded to this initiative, despite the possibility of normalisation with the whole Islamic world within it. It didn’t respond because the initiative made normalisation conditional on the creation of a Palestinian State within the 1967 borders and a solution to the Palestinian refugee problem. Israel was unwilling to pay that price.
Normalisation as promoted by Trump following his election in 2016 involved pressurising individual Arab states to ignore the central principle in the Arab Peace Initiative—that normalisation must be preceded by the creation of a Palestinian state. He was successful with three small Arab states.
Saudi Arabia normalising with Israel
The Biden administration elected in 2020 took up Trump’s normalisation policy with enthusiasm. At the time of the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2003, the administration was actively engaged in negotiations with Saudi Arabia and Israel about normalisation. Had it been successful it would likely have been a catalyst for other Arab states to follow suit.
With Netanyahu as Israeli Prime Minister, it was absolutely certain that Israel would not agree to the creation of a Palestinian State, so the success or otherwise of the negotiations depended crucially on whether Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) was prepared to normalise relations with Israel without a Palestinian State being created.
In late September 2003, the indications were that he would not insist on the creation of a Palestinian State prior to normalisation with Israel. In a Fox News interview [7] on 21st September 2023, he was asked:
(a) “What would it take for you to agree to normalise relations with Israel?”, and (b) “What concessions would Israel have to make to Palestinians?”
He could have responded to both by saying “the creation of a Palestinian state”, but he didn’t. To (a), he replied:
“For us, the Palestinian issue is very important. We need to solve that part. We got to see where we go. We hope that will reach a place that will ease the life of the Palestinians, get Israel as a player in the Middle East.”
To (b), he said that’s a matter for negotiations.
So, at that point, it looked likely that he was going to join Bahrain, Morocco and the UAE in reneging on the principle enshrined in the Arab Peace Initiative that normalisation with Israel must be preceded by the creation of a Palestinian State.
However, a couple of weeks later, on 7th October 2023, Hamas attacked Israel. Israel’s genocidal response to that has taken normalisation with Israel off the agenda for Arab states, though the Biden administration continued to pursue it half-heartedly and the new Trump administration has restated its commitment to it.
Saudi Arabia not normalising with Israel
In September 2023, the Crown Prince seemed to be on the brink of normalising relations with Israel without a Palestinian state. By contrast, a Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement {8] of 5th February 2025 (see below) says:
“His Royal Highness emphasized that Saudi Arabia will continue its relentless efforts to establish an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel without that.”
In the light of this, it’s highly unlikely that Saudi Arabia (or any other Arab state) will normalise relations with Israel without the creation of a Palestinian State.
David Morrison
28 August 2025
Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement (5 February 2025)
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs affirms that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s position on the establishment of a Palestinian state is firm and unwavering. His Royal Highness Mohammed bin Salman al Abdulaziz al Saud, Crown Prince and Prime Minister, clearly and unequivocally reaffirmed this stance during a speech at the opening of the first session of the ninth term of the Shura Council on September 18, 2024. His Royal Highness emphasized that Saudi Arabia will continue its relentless efforts to establish an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel without that.
“His Royal Highness also reiterated this firm position at the extraordinary Arab-Islamic Summit held in Riyadh on November 11, 2024. He stressed the continuation of efforts to establish a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, demanding an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. His Royal Highness also urged more peace-loving countries to recognise the State of Palestine and emphasized the importance of mobilizing the international community to support Palestinian people’s rights, as expressed in the United Nations General Assembly resolutions, recognising Palestine’s eligibility for full UN membership.
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia also reaffirms its unequivocal rejection of any infringement on the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, whether through Israeli settlement policies, land annexation, or attempts to displace Palestinian people from their land. The international community today has the duty to alleviate the severe humanitarian suffering endured by the Palestinian people, who will remain steadfast on their land and will not move from it.
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia emphasises this unwavering position is non-negotiable and not subject to compromises. Achieving lasting and just peace is impossible without the Palestinian people obtaining their legitimate rights, in accordance with international resolutions, as has been previously clarified to both the former and current US administrations.”
(This statement was issued in response to Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza in order to create a Riviera of the Middle East)
References:
1. http://www.rev.com/transcripts/white-house-dinner-with-netanyahu
2. trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/peacetoprosperity/
3. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/13/world/middleeast/abraham-accords-peace-trump-israel-netanyahu.html
4. peacemaker.un.org/en/node/9969
5. www.state.gov/the-abraham-accords
7. www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0NxI44yBDM
8. x.com/KSAmofaEN/status/1886953044484473007/photo/1
Irish Political Review 