Build a Palestinian state in Saudi Arabia? Arab leaders slam Netanyahu idea

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested a new Palestinian state could be established in Saudi Arabia, triggering outrage among Arab leaders.

He said in an interview with Israel’s Channel 14 that “the Saudis can create a Palestinian state in Saudi Arabia; they have a lot of land over there”.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has given his full suppport to US President Donald Trump’s proposal to resettle Palestinians out of Gaza.Credit: AP

His comments came shortly after he left Washington, DC, where US President Donald Trump shocked the world by proposing to resettle Palestinians out of Gaza and turn the strip into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.

The Arab League pushed back on Netanyahu’s remarks, saying they were “a complete detachment from reality”. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates also criticised the comments.

Trump said last week he would like to “take over Gaza” and resettle 2 million Palestinians. Trump’s remarks have been met with fury as the Palestinians see Gaza as an integral part of their future state.

But many commentators and Middle East experts see this as a negotiation tactic by the president, who wants to strike one big deal that would solve both the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and normalise ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, as well as other Arab nations.

The “Gaza Riviera” plan has, however, caused anger in the Middle East, with many Arab nations seeing this as an attempt to ethnically cleanse Gaza.

And with Netanyahu pushing for the plan to be materialised and suggesting that a Palestinian state be built on Saudi soil, a new row between Israel and the Arab nations could derail Trump’s greater vision for the region.

Egypt announced on Sunday that it would host an emergency summit on February 27 for Arab states to discuss a unified position to Trump’s Gaza plan.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II will jointly lead the meeting as Trump has suggested that both countries take in Palestinians from Gaza.

Egypt’s foreign ministry said the meeting was called after “extensive consultations by Egypt at the highest levels with Arab countries in recent days, including Palestine, which requested the summit, to address the latest serious developments regarding the Palestinian cause”.

While Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and a number of other countries in the Middle East have pushed back on Trump’s plan to transform Gaza into an American-built “riviera”, Israel has welcomed the idea, with Netanyahu giving it his full support.

In an interview with Fox News aired at the weekend, Netanyahu said Trump’s plan to relocate Palestinians in other countries was not “forcible eviction” or “ethnic cleansing”.

The Israeli prime minister also pushed back on Saudi Arabia’s demand for a Palestinian state, saying: “Nobody is going to do that. Nobody is going to say, ‘Oh, give them a Palestinian state.’ They just had one. It’s called Gaza under Hamas.”

Israel’s arch enemy, Iran, has also harshly criticised Trump’s plan, arguing that it poses a “serious threat to the stability and security” of the Middle East.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told his Egyptian counterpart, Badr Abdelatty, on Sunday: “Forcibly displacing Palestinians from Gaza is part of a scheme to eliminate Palestine in a colonial manner.”

Araghchi stressed that it was essential that Islamic countries “take a firm and unified stance against this project”.

The Israeli army, meanwhile, withdrew its last forces from a corridor separating north and south Gaza, causing Hamas to taunt Netanyahu for failing to achieve “total victory”.

The withdrawal from the eastern part of the Netzarim Corridor, which was in line with the ceasefire agreement, resulted in Palestinians returning to the area on Sunday (AEDT).

A Hamas official told AFP: “Israeli forces have dismantled their positions and military posts and completely withdrawn their tanks from the Netzarim Corridor on Salah-al-Din Road, allowing vehicles to pass freely in both directions.”

Hamas said the withdrawal “completes the failure of the war of extermination against our people” and that it “debunks Netanyahu’s lie about achieving a total victory”.

Netanyahu sent an Israeli delegation to Doha at the weekend to discuss technical details of the ceasefire agreement.

A source familiar with the issue told London’s The Telegraph that the delegation included representatives from Mossad, Shin Bet and the Israel Defence Forces, and that the prime minister would convene the security cabinet when he returned to Israel from Washington to discuss the second phase of the ceasefire.

The Telegraph, London

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