Saudi Arabia confirmed Wednesday that it will not make peace with Israel until a final status agreement is reached between the Jewish State and the Palestinian Authority, based on the “Arab Peace Initiatives” proposed by Riyadh in 2002.
In the first official remarks to be released in response to last week’s historic agreement on diplomatic ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan said in a statement, “Saudi Arabia affirms its commitment to peace as a strategic option based on the Arab Peace Initiatives.
“We consider any unilateral Israeli measure taken to annex Palestinian territories or to build settlements as illegitimate and detrimental to the two-state solution, and any efforts to suspend those unilateral moves are appreciated,” Farhan said, explaining why Riyadh did not oppose the actions taken by the UAE.
The Arab Peace Initiative — known as the “Saudi Initiative” — calls for the summary destruction of nearly half the current State of Israel: a full withdrawal to the 1948 Armistice Lines, including the division of Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem. In addition, it calls for all Arab refugees from the 1948 War of Israel’s Independence — a defensive war in which Israel was attacked by all six surrounding Arab nations — and their millions of subsequent generations of descendants as well, to be granted the so-called “right of return.” In exchange, Israel is offered “peace and normalization” with the Arab states.
White House senior adviser and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner said Friday that he believes Israel and Saudi Arabia will eventually find enough common ground to reach normalization, once other Gulf Nations first build their own diplomatic ties, already in process. He said the younger generation in Saudi Arabia sees Israel as the “Silicon Valley” of the Middle East and is looking forward to working together with the Jewish State; however, the older generation is in a different mindset, and ‘it takes more than a day to turn around a battleship.’
“I do think we have other countries that are very interested in moving forward [with Israel] and as that progresses I do think that it’s an inevitability that Saudi Arabia and Israel will have fully normalized relations and they’ll be able to do a lot of great things together,” Kushner added.