Israel to block Saudi-led delegation of Middle Eastern ministers from visiting West Bank
Senior Israeli official says Jerusalem won’t cooperate with moves that harm its security, claiming PA’s Abbas was slated to use visit to advance Palestinian statehood
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
Israel decided to block a delegation of Middle Eastern foreign ministers led by Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat from making a landmark visit to the West Bank, a senior Israeli official confirmed to The Times of Israel on Friday.
The foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan were slated to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on Sunday.
The senior Israeli official said that the PA was planning to use the delegation’s visit to “promote the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
“Israel will not cooperate with moves designed to harm it and its security,” the Israeli official asserted, claiming that a Palestinian state would become “a terrorist state in the heart of the Land of Israel.”
The Arab ministers were not planning to visit Israel, but because Israel controls the borders of the West Bank, its approval is required for them to enter the territory.
The visit by Prince Faisal bin Farhan was supposed to be the first by a Saudi foreign minister since Israel took over the West Bank in 1967. The ministers were supposed to arrive in Ramallah via helicopters from Jordan, a source familiar with the matter said.
The decision to block the visit was made during a ministerial consultation Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held on Thursday.
The move will also likely raise further questions over the legitimacy of Israel’s control of the West Bank.
The Israeli entry ban is likely to further strain Israel’s relations with its Arab neighbors, which have already deteriorated significantly since the outbreak of the Gaza war.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally supported the trip, which was also intended to show support for the embattled PA, according to the Axios news site.
The Israeli decision is likely to further distance efforts to secure a normalization deal between Jerusalem and Riyadh. Israeli officials have claimed that an agreement is possible, downplaying repeated Saudi assertions that it won’t happen absent an Israeli acquiescence to creating a pathway for a future Palestinian state.
In attempting to justify the decision, the senior Israeli official noted that the PA has yet to condemn Hamas’s October 7 onslaught and accused Ramallah of violating agreements with Israel.
The PA has indeed yet to explicitly condemn the October 7 attack, instead issuing more vague condemnations of violence against all civilians, as Israel’s war in Gaza intensified. More recently, though, Abbas has issued repeated condemnations of Hamas, calling on the terror group to release the remaining hostages, disarm and give up control of the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, Israel continues to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues that it is supposed to transfer to Ramallah each month in violation of the Oslo Accords. Jerusalem says it withholds some of the funds to offset payments the PA makes to the families of Palestinian security prisoners and slain attackers. Abbas signed a decree in February ending the conditioning of such payments on the length of one’s prison sentence.
Palestinian ambassador to Saudi Arabia Mazen Ghoneim told Saudi outlet Al Ekhbariya that the rare joint ministerial visit comes as the war in Gaza nears its 20th month, and Ghoneim said it marks “a clear message [that] the Palestinian cause is a central issue to Arabs and Muslims.”
Next month, Saudi Arabia and France will co-chair an international conference meant to resurrect the two-state solution at the United Nations headquarters in New York. France is considering recognizing a Palestinian state during the confab and Riyadh is hoping other countries will follow suit. Israel is already taking steps, it says are aimed at combating the effort, including establishing new settlements throughout the West Bank to further harm efforts to advance a two-state solution.
Sunday’s visit was supposed to mark a further boost to the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority, which has faced pressure from Arab and Western allies to reform, as they push for the body to replace Hamas as the governing authority in the Gaza Strip after the war. Israel has blocked such a transition, but is facing mounting pushback from Arab allies, who have expressed willingness to assist in the post-war management of Gaza if Jerusalem allows Ramallah to gain a foothold there.
The entry ban caps off a month that has seen Israel increasingly diplomatically isolated over its prosecution of the war in Gaza and broader conduct in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The European Union announced that it will review its commercial ties with Israel; the UK has halted talks on expanding its trade agreement with Israel; Germany and France have threatened steps against Israel over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza; even US President Donald Trump is calling for a quick end to the war in Gaza and lamented how Palestinians there are “starving” before Israel slightly lifted its blockade last week.
Earlier this week, the UAE summoned Israel’s envoy in Abu Dhabi for a highly rare reprimand over the annual rally of religious extremists Israel again allowed to go forward on Monday in Jerusalem, despite the calls by its participants for violence against Arabs and Palestinians.
AFP contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.