From the Liveblog of
Monday, December 9, 2024
Smotrich says Saudi normalization deal won’t happen if it requires Palestinian state
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich says Israel will not agree to a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia if it requires establishing a Palestinian state.
“If that’s a deal breaker, the deal will sink,” he tells Bloomberg in a rare interview with a foreign media outlet.
While US and Arab officials told The Times of Israel that Saudi Arabia before the Gaza war had been prepared to settle with steps by Israel that create a pathway for a Palestinian state in exchange for normalization, Riyadh has raised the price of the Palestinian component of the deal over the past year, stressing in no uncertain terms that it will not agree to recognize Israel without a Palestinian state being established.
Smotrich tells Bloomberg that the incoming administration of Donald Trump “understands the obligation to ensure the future existence of Israel,” arguing that this involves scrapping the two-state paradigm.
US President Joe Biden’s administration and much of the international community have backed strengthening the Palestinian Authority it to return to governing the Gaza Strip after the war.
Smotrich tells Bloomberg that he and Netanyahu oppose the idea. Both of them have likened the PA, which backs a two-state solution, to Hamas. Netanyahu has instead floated the idea of Arab countries like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia contributing to the administration of Gaza after the war, but those countries and others in the region have repeatedly said that they would not take part in the post-war management or reconstruction of Gaza without the PA’s involvement.
As for the West Bank, where some 160,000 Palestinians have been barred from returning to their jobs in Israel and the settlements since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught, Smotrich says that ban will not be lifted.
While Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron has come out against that decision due to the ramifications for Israel’s economy and construction sector, Smotrich says it will pay off in the long run. “It will be a difficult year or two, but eventually the construction sector will emerge with better building technologies and productivity,” he tells Bloomberg.
The finance minister also insists that Israel’s economy remains strong, despite several major agencies lowering Israel’s credit rating in recent months.
“It’s important to me that our partners, investors in Israel and abroad, know our hands are firmly on the wheel,” he says.
Pointing out that the shekel was up eight percent against the dollar last Friday, Smotrich argues that the International Monetary Fund and the credit rating agencies are “misreading the Israeli economy.”
Smotrich also highlights that tech funding in October reached $9 billion year-on-year — fourth only to Silicon Valley, New York City and Boston: “The economy’s working much better than might have been expected.”
He also argues that Trump’s victory provides an opportunity to topple the Islamic Republic of Iran: “We need to deal with the octopus head and eliminate the Iranian regime.”
“We should join hands on this with the new Trump administration. The Western world cannot afford a dictatorial regime which strives for nuclear weapons and threatens to destroy it,” Smotrich says.
Hook said last month that the Trump administration was not seeking regime change in Iran but would take a much harder line against Tehran.
