ToI reveals: US and Saudis reached understandings on Palestinian component of normalization before Oct. 7
On eve of Hamas attack, Blinken was scheduled to visit Israel to discuss document compiled with Riyadh that detailed relatively minor concessions PM would have to make to Palestinians
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
WASHINGTON — The US and Saudi Arabia had reached understandings on the eve of Hamas’s October 7 attack regarding the concessions Israel would have to make vis-à-vis the Palestinians for Riyadh to normalize relations with Jerusalem, The Times of Israel can reveal.
US President Joe Biden’s administration and Saudi Arabia had crafted a document on the Palestinian component of the normalization deal during the summer of 2023. And its existence demonstrates that the sides were much further along in their negotiations than previously known.
These and many more revelations are contained in a Times of Israel exposé published Friday — The day after that never came: How time ran out on Blinken’s plan for postwar Gaza. The article also details US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s subsequent efforts to end that war by advancing a plan for the postwar management of Gaza and reviving normalization negotiations — both of which came up short by the time he left office in January.
Blinken produced a document outlining his postwar plan, which ToI reveals and quotes from for the first time.
As for the pre-October 7 concessions that the US and Saudi Arabia expected Israel to make for the Palestinians, they were relatively modest and included Israel giving the PA control over additional West Bank territory. This would be done by changing parts of Israeli-controlled Area C to Area B, where the PA has limited authority, and changing parts of Area B to Area A, which is under Palestinian security control and governance.
There was still a gap between the US and Saudi Arabia regarding the timeline for Washington to recognize a Palestinian state, with Riyadh pushing for it to be done within a shorter period.
However, enough consensus had been reached for Blinken to make initial plans to travel to Israel in early October 2023, carrying the document Washington had crafted with Riyadh.
Blinken expected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to add his own amendments to the document, including conditions that Jerusalem likely felt would have indefinitely pushed off the establishment of a Palestinian state or foreclosed the idea entirely.
For its part, Israel had been updated on the US-Saudi negotiations and was comfortable enough with the modest steps discussed for the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem to craft a draft of a potential normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia.
But Blinken’s agenda was completely upended by the October 7 Hamas invasion and massacre, which forced Washington to shelve its efforts on brokering a normalization deal and instead to try to manage the war in Gaza.
Biden and his aides have repeatedly gone on to say that the Hamas attack was motivated in part by a desire to torpedo the US effort to broker a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The Times of Israel’s exposé shows just how close the sides actually were to inking such a deal before the attack, and reveals how the US sought to revive those talks as a means for ending the grueling Gaza war that ensued.
The Times of Israel Community.