GOP senator: Israel will have to accept two-state solution to normalize ties with Saudis

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina says additional Arab countries will not agree to normalize ties with Israel unless Jerusalem agrees to a two-state solution.

The comments amount to a rare recognition by a Republican lawmaker that Palestinian statehood is a condition of expansion of the Abraham Accords, and they come as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is weeks into a public post-October 7 campaign in which he has vowed to block the strategy.

Being interviewed on “Meet the Press,” Lindsey Graham hails the Biden administration’s effort to revive normalization talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia and is asked whether he thinks it’s realistic for the US to still pursue that goal after Hamas’s October 7 terror onslaught.

“Yeah, I do,” he begins.

“But can tell you, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries cannot normalize with Israel if they’re having been seen as throwing the Palestinians under the bus,” he says.

Moving forward, Graham posits, “the options are to continue the death spiral, or use October 7th as a catalyst for change.”

“I think the Arabs are going to demand some form of two-state solution to recognize Israel,” the senior Republican lawmaker speculates.

“I think Israel’s going to demand security buffers different than before, and they need to make those demands,” he says, adding these are critical to ensuring the Hamas massacres that took place on October 7 cannot be repeated.

“If we don’t get this right this time, we’re talking about another generation of just tit-for-tat death,” the senior Republican lawmaker asserts.