U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff met with Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in Saudi Arabia last week for talks on a “mega-deal” with Riyadh, including a historic peace accord with Israel, Axios reported on Friday.
Witkoff, a Jewish businessman and longtime friend to Trump, held a series of diplomatic discussions during a recent trip to the Middle East that culminated in a visit to Abu Dhabi for a crypto conference.
According to Axios, the Biden administration sought a U.S.-Saudi defense treaty as well as an agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation between the countries. Ratification of the treaty by the Senate would have been more likely had it included a peace agreement between Riyadh and Jerusalem.
Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 onslaught on Israel’s south and the subsequent wars in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, however, derailed the negotiations.
One major obstacle to normalization is Riyadh’s demand for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his senior advisers believe that under Trump and with the Jewish state’s successful campaigns against Iran and its proxies in the region, the Saudis might be convinced to forgo this condition, according to Axios.
In November, Saudi Arabia reiterated its position that the kingdom will not formalize relations with Israel without a pathway to a Palestinian state, asserting that some deals it is negotiating with the United States are “not that connected” to Washington’s normalization drive.
Riyadh is “quite happy” to wait until the situation in the Gaza Strip is “amenable” before normalizing ties with the Jewish state, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said at an investment summit.
He added that U.S.-Saudi trade and technology deals are “not tied to any third parties” and can potentially progress “quite quickly.”
Recent reports suggested that a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip could be reached before Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Hamas has agreed to two of Israel’s key conditions for a ceasefire in Gaza, raising hopes for an agreement to release Israeli hostages within days.
Hamas for the first time agreed to accept the presence of Israeli forces in Gaza during a 60-day truce, the newspaper quoted unnamed Arab mediators as saying. The sources also confirmed to the paper reports from earlier in the week that Hamas had submitted a list of hostages, including U.S. citizens, whom it would release.
The purported breakthrough follows a Dec. 3 threat by Trump that there would be “hell to pay” unless the hostages were freed by the time he assumed office on Jan. 20.
Hamas terrorists murdered roughly 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in the deadliest single-day attack in the Jewish state’s history. The Islamist group also kidnapped 251 individuals into the Palestinian enclave, where about 100 still remain—although it is not known how many are alive.
