Saudi leader to host Abbas next week, as talk of Israel normalization deal fades
Crown prince and PA president to discuss impact of Haniyeh assassination on Gaza war, while trying to coordinate on how to approach potential Trump or Harris administrations
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will travel to Saudi Arabia on Sunday to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, two senior Palestinian officials told The Times of Israel.
Riyadh has intensified its engagement with the Palestinians over the past two years amid negotiations with US President Joe Biden’s administration for the kingdom to sign a normalization agreement with Israel. Bin Salman met twice with Abbas in April.
Saudi Arabia has conditioned a deal with Israel on Jerusalem agreeing to establish a pathway to a future Palestinian state — a nonstarter for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, particularly as the Israel-Hamas war drags on.
With a normalization agreement effectively off the table until at least the US presidential election, Abbas and bin Salman will try and coordinate their approaches to Washington, preparing for either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump to enter the White House in January, one of the Palestinian officials said Thursday.
The US has sought to advance the normalization deal alongside a defense pact it has been negotiating with Saudi Arabia, which would require Senate ratification.
Two congressional sources speaking to The Times of Israel last month maintained that there is not enough time left in the congressional calendar for the Senate to hold the hearings necessary to approve the bilateral US-Saudi deal.
There are less than three weeks in which the US Senate is in session before it recesses on September 27 for the last time until the election. This period includes the month of August, when Congress is only open for two days.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer could theoretically try and call lawmakers back from recess in October, but the two congressional sources acknowledged the unlikelihood of the administration securing enough Republicans support to approve the pact weeks before the presidential election. The administration must also get Senate Democrats who have been highly critical of Saudi Arabia on board, though this appears less of an obstacle.
A slightly more realistic possibility would be for the Senate to ratify the deal during the lame-duck period if Harris were to lose to Trump in November, the sources said, noting that a Republican-controlled White House will have a harder time coaxing Democrats to cooperate than visa versa, given the latter’s discomfort with the rights records of both Jerusalem and Riyadh.
Abbas’s visit will come less than a week after the alleged Israeli assassination of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, and the two leaders will discuss its impact on the ongoing war in Gaza along with efforts to unify the various Palestinian factions, according to both Palestinian officials.
One of the officials said Ramallah is hoping that next week’s meeting will move Riyadh closer to resuming Saudi financial assistance, which the PA has long aimed to have restored since drying up in 2016.
Also on Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a phone call with his Saudi counterpart Prince Faisal bin Farhan. The pair discussed efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza, the State Department said.
Notably, the US readout made no mention of efforts to boost regional integration, a phase it often uses to reference the negotiations toward an Israel-Saudi normalization agreement, which evidently weren’t even discussed on the call.
