The US renews ties with the Palestinians and encourages Saudi Arabia and Israel to normalize relations

US President Joe Biden is in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the last leg of his trip to the Middle East, where he flew directly from Tel Aviv on Friday, just hours after the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia announced the opening its airspace to “all airlines”, ending the ban on flights to and from Israel to the country.

The decision is a gesture by Riyadh as part of a broader rapprochement between Israel and the Arab world as they position themselves against the threat from Iran. Biden claims it is the result of her administration’s push toward a more integrated and stable Middle East region.

“While this opening has been discussed for a long time, now, thanks to months of constant diplomacy between my administration and Saudi Arabia, it is finally a reality. Today I will be the first president of the United States to fly from Israel to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia,” Biden said in a statement.

Biden said the Saudi decision may “help build momentum toward Israel’s further integration in the region,” including with the kingdom itself, suggesting a possible diplomatic normalization that would be the most significant expansion of the Trump-era Abraham Accords.

At the same time, his administration sought to mend ties with the Palestinians, offering economic and technical assistance as he met with President Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, in Bethlehem on Friday.

The signing of the Abraham Accords. in 2020, it normalized relations between Israel and the neighboring Gulf countries, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, as well as with Sudan and Morocco. However, the Palestinians see the deal as sidelining their cause, as Arab nations have already stopped insisting on diplomatic relations seeking to pressure Israel to negotiate a two-state solution and improve its treatment of the Palestinians in the territories it occupies.

Under the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, the Saudi-led Arab nations made normalization of relations with Israel conditional on its accepting the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories, occupied since June 4, 1967, in the West Bank. and the Gaza Strip.

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