The government of Saudi Arabia hosted the inaugural meeting of the “International Alliance to Implement the Two-State Solution,” a nebulous coalition organized by Riyadh to formalize the creation of a Palestinian state.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan used the opportunity to accuse Israel of “genocide” for engaging in military operations against the genocidal terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah. The administration of outgoing President Joe Biden sent a State Department envoy to the meeting, though meetings at press time do not indicated Washington played a prominent role in the event.
The “international alliance” is one of several diplomatic measures Saudi Arabia is taking to publicly oppose Israel’s attempts to protect itself from genocidal jihadists, pivoting away from the direction Riyadh was taking prior to Biden taking office of potential normalization with Jerusalem. Under Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump, Saudi Arabia greatly enhanced its anti-terror cooperation with the United States, establishing the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology in 2017 and going to war with the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists of Yemen. Biden prioritized antagonizing Saudi Arabia in his foreign policy, however, vowing to turn the major Middle East nation into a “pariah” state during the 2020 presidential election and attempting to improve diplomacy with Iran.
Biden tried to make amends with the Saudi government during a catastrophic visit to the country in 2o22 that yielded no strategic deliverables for America and resulted in circulating gossip that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman mocked Biden’s “mental acuity.”
Despite Biden’s efforts, Mohammed bin Salman, commonly known by his initials MBS, did not appear to entirely abandon the possibility of normalizing ties with Israel until the unprecedented Hamas siege of Israel on October 7, 2023, which killed about 1,200 civilians, including children as young as infants, and featured extensive acts of torture, gang rape, abduction, and desecration of corpses. Shortly after the attacks, MBS began demanding the establishment of a state of “Palestine” with its capital in Jerusalem – the capital of Israel – in public addresses, which he had conspicuously omitted from other comments prior to the attacks about diplomacy with Israel.
The Saudi government first announced the creation of the “Global Alliance to Implement a Two-State Solution” in late September on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. At the time, Prince Faisal, the foreign minister, said that the alliance was a joint effort between European countries and the member of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
“Self-defence cannot justify the killing of tens of thousands of civilians and the practice of systematic destruction, forced displacement, the use of starvation as a tool of war,” Prince Faisal denounced then, “incitement and dehumanisation, and systematic torture in its most heinous forms, including sexual violence and other crimes documented according to United Nations reports.”
Reports on the first meeting of the alliance were light on details of any active measures taken. Prince Faisal offered comments in which he condemned Israeli operations against Hamas and Hezbollah, which have eliminated much of the senior leadership of those grounds, as “catastrophic.
“A genocide is happening with the goal of evicting the Palestinian people from their land, which Saudi Arabia rejects,” he claimed on Wednesday. The foreign minister was not quoted as similarly condemning the explicitly genocidal aims of the jihadist groups in question, such as replacement Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem stating on Wednesday that a “ceasefire” with Israel was possible if the entire population of Israel was expelled from its country.
The Saudi foreign minister boasted that nearly 90 countries had attended the Alliance meeting, which is expected to last two days, and reports noted that it would also discuss defending the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestinians, which Israeli officials have found to be closely linked to Hamas terror operations in Gaza.
In addition to the summit this week, the Saudis announced that the country would host an “Arab-Islamic summit” on November 11 “to discuss countering Israeli aggression,” according to the Emirati newspaper the National.
Saudi Arabia’s leadership against Israel is a dramatic pivot away from the position the country was in during the Trump administration and even as recently as September 2023. That month, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said in an interview that his country was seeking ways to improve relations with Israel.
“For us, the Palestinian issue is very important,” MBS told Fox News. “We need to solve that part. … We hope that it will reach a place that it will ease the life of the Palestinians, and get Israel back as a player in the Middle East.”
If an agreement would “give the Palestinians their needs and make the region calm, we’re going to work with whoever’s there,” he added.
Notably, MBS did not mention the creation of a Palestinian state as a precondition to peace with Israel.
In November 2023, at an event for members of the anti-American BRICS coalition, the crown prince condemned the Israeli government for responding to the Hamas attack and explicitly demanded a “Palestinian state … with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
“We reiterate our categorical rejection of these operations that have claimed the lives of thousands of children, women, and the elderly,” the de facto ruler said. “We demand an immediate stop of the military operations, and the provision of humanitarian corridors to enable international humanitarian organizations to perform their role and aid civilians.”
MBS repeated that promise in September.
“The kingdom will not stop its tireless work towards the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and we affirm that the kingdom will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel without that,” the crown prince asserted.
While Saudi Arabia continues to maintain a distance from the mass murderers of Hamas, its fraught relationship with the governing entity of the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority, has improved since the October 7 attacks. In September 2023, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that he believed the Saudis had become disillusioned with the Palestinian Authority as its leadership was corrupt and it was a hindrance to improving ties to Israel. Nearly a year after the attacks, the Saudi government reportedly ended an eight-year embargo on funding the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian officials told the radical leftist New York Times (NYT) newspaper that Riyadh would be funding the entity to the tune of as much as $60 million.