Saudi Arabia ‘won’t align with Israel’ as doubts emerge over Trump’s Palestine peace plan

The de facto leader of the Arab world has moved to assure allies in the wake of concerns that the kingdom might be preparing to back a might back a future US deal which aligns it with Israel on key issues.

King Salman’s private guarantees to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his public defence of long-standing Arab positions in recent months have helped reverse perceptions that Saudi Arabia’s stance was changing under his powerful young son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, diplomats and analysts said.

This in turn has called into question whether Saudi Arabia, birthplace of Islam and site of its holiest shrines, can rally Arab support for a new push to end the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian dispute, with a view to closing ranks against mutual enemy Iran, which only this week launched a rocket attack on two Saudi oil tankers.

A senior Arab diplomat in Riyadh said: “In Saudi Arabia, the king is the one who decides on this issue now, not the crown prince.

“The US mistake was they thought one country could pressure the rest to give in, but it’s not about pressure. No Arab leader can concede on Jerusalem or Palestine.”

Palestinian officials said in December that Prince Mohammed, known as MbS, had pressed Abbas to support the U.S. plan despite concerns it offered the Palestinians limited self-government inside disconnected patches of the occupied West Bank, with no right of return for refugees displaced by the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948 and 1967.

Such a plan would diverge from the Arab Peace Initiative drawn up by Saudi Arabia in 2002, in which Arab nations offered Israel normal ties in return for a statehood deal with the Palestinians and full Israeli withdrawal from territory captured in 1967.

Saudi officials have denied any difference between King Salman, who has vocally supported that initiative, and MbS, who has shaken up long-held policies on many issues and told a US magazine in April that Israelis are entitled to live peacefully on their own land – a rare statement for an Arab leader.

The Palestinian ambassador to Riyadh, Basem Al-Agha, told Reuters that King Salman had expressed support for Palestinians in a recent meeting with Abbas, saying: “We will not abandon you.

“We accept what you accept and we reject what you reject.”

He said that King Salman naming the 2018 Arab League conference “The Jerusalem Summit” and announcing $200 million in aid for Palestinians were messages that Jerusalem and refugees were back on the table.

The Saudi authorities did not respond to a request for comment on the current status of diplomatic efforts.

Diplomats in the region say Washington’s current thinking does not include Arab East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state, a right of return for refugees or a freeze of Israeli settlements in lands claimed by the Palestinians.

Senior adviser Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, has not provided concrete details of the US strategy more than 18 months after he was tasked with forging peace.

A diplomat in Riyadh briefed on Kushner’s latest visit to the kingdom said King Salman and MbS had seen him together: “MbS did the talking while the king was in the background.”

Independent analyst Neil Partrick said King Salman appears to have reined in MbS’ “politically reckless approach” because of Jerusalem’s importance to Muslims.

In an interview at the end of his trip, Mr Kushner – who is married to Mr Trump’s daughter Ivanka – said Washington would announce its Middle East peace plan soon.

However there has been little to suggest any significant progress towards ending the decades-old conflict, which Mr Trump has claimed would be “the ultimate deal”.

A White House official told reporters last week that Trump’s envoys were working on the most detailed set of proposals to date for the long-awaited peace proposal, though there is thus far no release date.