Trouble for Abraham Accords: Saudis Try to establish E. Jerusalem Consulate for Palestinians, but Extremist Israeli Gov’t says, “No!”

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Quds Press reports that Saudi Arabia has given its ambassador to Jordan, Nayef al-Sudairi, an extra portfolio of consul in East Jerusalem. He presented his credentials to Majid al-Khalidi, an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The Saudis did not coordinate this appointment with the Israelis, and it is the first time the kingdom appointed a diplomatic official specifically for some aspect of Palestinian affairs. East Jerusalem has about 400,000 Palestinian, mostly Muslim, residents and the Palestinians want it as the capital of their state.

The Israelis have illegally annexed all of Jerusalem, and were lambasted by the UN Security Council for it, and almost no one in the outside world recognizes the annexation.

The Saudis may have hoped to open a consulate in East Jerusalem, but the current extremist government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu truculently batted away any such prospect, saying that al-Sudairi may meet as he pleases with officials of the Palestinian Authority, but he may not have an office in East Jerusalem.

The position of the Israeli government is that all of Jerusalem is part of Israel, where only Jews, and never Israelis of Palestinian heritage, exercise sovereignty. It wants to prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state and it certainly would never accept that East Jerusalem should be its capital.

The Biden administration’s Middle East policy is now that of Jared Kushner. The people around President Biden, at least, are attempting to expand the sacrilegiously entitled “Abraham Accords” to include Saudi Arabia. As with the United Arab Emirates, which did sign onto the accord, the attractions are obvious. Israel would get access to Arab oil investment capital, and Gulf oil states would gain access to Israeli tech start-ups and their AI tools, for spying on their subjects and other states.

One obstacle in the way of this plan is the elderly King Salman Bin Abdulaziz, 87, who is firmly attached to the 2002 Arab League peace plan, which offers recognition to Israel for its return to 1949 borders, i.e., its relinquishing of the West Bank and Gaza. Israel seized and militarily occupied these Palestinian territories in 1967 and has assiduously colonized the Palestinian West Bank.

Moreover, Saudi Arabia is a real country, not a postage stamp nation like the UAE, which has only about a million citizens along with some 8 million guest workers, primarily from India and Pakistan. UAE ruler Mohammed Bin Zayed al-Nahayan doesn’t have to be afraid of his own population, since the guest workers have no right to permanent residence and can be deported en masse if they make trouble, and the one million citizens are well taken care of by the state and more interested in jet skiing than politics.

In contrast, Saudi Arabia has a citizen population of something like 19 or 20 million, along with over 13 million expatriates and guest workers. There have been substantial rebellions against the royal family, including an al-Qaeda uprising in 2003-2006, and back in the first decade of this century when the Saudis were experimenting with municipal elections, the far right fundamentalists did well.

So, despite his present popularity, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman could have a revolt on his hands if his government recognized Israel and turned a blind eye to the continued brutalization and displacement of the occupied Palestinians.

This small contretemps is not very important in the larger scheme of things, but it does show that the Saudis will not at the moment recognize Israel if nothing is done for the Palestinians, And it shows that the extremist Netanyahu government adamantly refuses to do anything for the Palestinians.

The Saudis also want the right to have their own nuclear energy program, with on-site uranium enrichment, like that of Israel and Iran.

You can’t rule out that the Saudis will find a way to join the Abraham Accords. But the current Netanyahu government is not likely to offer the Saudis even a symbolic win on the issue of the Palestinians, and it certainly won’t countenance a Saudi nuclear program. The negotiating sides will be lucky if they can just avoid a full-scale massacre and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians under the fascist cabinet members, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. Such an event could well put Saudi protesters in the street and contribute to instability throughout the region.

Shakespeare observed in King Henry the Fourth that “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.” The head that both wears the crown and gets sucked into Jared Kushner’s/ Antony Blinken’s sleazy transactional approach to the region’s problems would lie uneasy indeed.