Looking Out for Number One

Tying Israeli-Palestinian issues to Saudi normalization is a U.S. interest, not a favor

If you are a high-flying international diplomat, Saudi Arabia is the place to be this week. National Security Council Senior Coordinator for the Middle East Brett McGurk and Assistant Secretary of State Barbara Leaf are both there to discuss the contours of an Israeli-Saudi normalization deal, as is a delegation of Palestinian officials led by top Mahmoud Abbas confidant Hussein al-Sheikh and intelligence chief Majed Faraj. The U.S. officials are slated to meet with the Saudis and the Palestinians, with the latter in town in order to lay out their asks for what they would like to see in a normalization agreement. In contrast to the Abraham Accords, in which the UAE secured a temporary halt to Israel’s potential West Bank annexation but the Israeli-Palestinian dimension was otherwise absent, talks on normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia are not ignoring or bypassing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Much of the credit for this lies at the White House’s feet, which has reportedly told all parties involved that a normalization deal must include Israeli measures that put a two-state outcome back on more secure footing.

President Joe Biden has made securing an Israel-Saudi normalization agreement a U.S. priority for good reason. Washington has strong interests in isolating Iran, bolstering Israel’s integration in the Middle East, fostering greater and more open cooperation between American regional partners, and moving Saudi Arabia out of China’s orbit. All of these are potential benefits to the U.S. of an agreement that will be brokered largely on the back of American policy concessions and guarantees. But despite the activity this week indicating that normalization will be connected in some way to the Israeli-Palestinian front, including a Palestinian component is widely spoken about not as a central U.S. interest, but as little more than a concession to the Palestinians or a way to smooth the path for Riyadh to sign on the dotted line. This framing is a mistake; the direct benefits to the U.S. of shifting the trajectory of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are more than ancillary, and will be significant for American policy and for American politics.

The U.S. has a longstanding desire to see Israel be part of the Middle East beyond its geographical location. From the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s, to the difficulties of keeping Israel on the sidelines of the Persian Gulf War while it was being bombarded by Iraqi Scud missiles, to the decades during which American multilateral security efforts were hampered by Israel’s exclusion from CENTCOM, the U.S. has been harmed by the region’s refusal to fully accept Israel. The promise for the U.S. of Israeli-Egyptian and Israeli-Jordanian peace treaties and the Abraham Accords normalization agreements was eliminating obstacles that were hampering American objectives, with a major obstacle being Israel’s isolation.

Notwithstanding decades of peace treaties, normalization agreements, and ties that are increasingly in the public eye, full cooperation between Israel and its neighbors remains elusive. Egypt and Jordan have never moved beyond a cold peace, with the treaties functioning more as military-to-military agreements than anything else. This is a direct function of Israeli policies in the West Bank, which cause political problems for the Egyptian and Jordanian governments and make Israel less popular with the populace of its two immediate neighbors than those of any other Arab country. Normalization between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, which has looked since the outset like an agreement that has filtered down to the societal level, is also running into problems tied to Palestinian issues. Statements blasting Israeli actions against Palestinians or purported violations of the Temple Mount status quo are now routine, and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is still waiting for his first invitation to Abu Dhabi.

From an American perspective—and not just an Israeli one—replicating this dynamic with Saudi Arabia is not ideal. A bilateral Israel-Saudi relationship that is enduringly subject to the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that requires constant American attention and mediation will negate many of the benefits to the U.S. from day one. Part of the promise of full-fledged regional normalization is that Washington will be able to focus its energy elsewhere, but that will be blunted if a U.S.-brokered deal leaves behind a pair of squabbling partners. Shunting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the side also leaves any agreement less durable, reducing not only the benefits to the U.S. but the reputational legacy that comes from more fully transforming the region.

The impact of a deal that does not address all potential spoilers will be felt by the U.S. beyond the narrower Israel-Saudi aperture. The U.S. has floated ideas like a regional security architecture that would be akin to a Middle Eastern NATO and an integrated missile defense system with interceptors and radar spread throughout the Gulf and the Levant. This is partly about the current threat posed by Iran, and partly about the longer-term goal of multiple administrations to foster greater burden-sharing by U.S. security partners in order to free up American assets. Without real progress on Israeli-Palestinian issues in a way that turns down the temperature and puts the Palestinians on a genuine path to viable sovereignty, this larger vision will remain a pipe dream, as too many necessary participants in this project still view Israel as too toxic to fully embrace.

There is a domestic politics angle as well to ensuring that Israeli-Palestinian issues are addressed in the course of Israel-Saudi normalization. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict burns brighter than any other foreign policy issue in the American political firmament, creating more outrage and controversies and consuming more attention from elected officials and candidates than it should. It plays an outsized role in political fundraising and in political toxicity and exhausts politicians across the spectrum. It drives ugly accusations related to antisemitism, dual loyalties, the role of money in politics, and conflict entrepreneurism. In the midst of intense political polarization—perhaps unprecedented since the Civil War—the American political scene would benefit from anything that turns the temperature down on Israeli-Palestinian issues, irrespective of whatever effects are felt on the ground 6,000 miles away.

Israel-Saudi normalization presents an enormous opportunity to make significant progress on a foreign policy problem that has bedeviled the U.S. for decades. Ensuring that it addresses Israeli-Palestinian issues in a meaningful way is not a favor to outside actors or a tactic to forestall potential opposition to an agreement. It is a way of enhancing critical American interests that will benefit the U.S. and its regional goals as much as anything else in the potential deal that is being contemplated. As White House and State Department officials focus this week on the details of how a normalization agreement might benefit Palestinian sovereignty and quality of life, observers should not lose sight of the fact that doing so is a clear and compelling U.S. interest for a variety of reasons. Biden should continue to prioritize this issue if the U.S. is going to play both matchmaker and guarantor.