Normalization with ‘Israel’ comes if there’s agreement on peace, says al-Jubeir

Saudi Arabia’s minister of state for foreign affairs, Adel al-Jubeir, has said his country has not moved with regard to its position on normalizing ties with the occupation state, despite diplomatic deals by its close allies and neighbours.

In an exclusive interview with Arab News on Friday, Jubeir said that the Saudi position has not changed and it still supports the Arab Peace Initiative, which offers normalization in exchange for the creation of a Palestinian state.

He said the recent normalization deals by the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan were “sovereign decisions,” but if they led to a change in Israeli policies towards Palestinians “then there may be some benefit in it”.

“But as far as the kingdom is concerned, our position remains that normalization can only come if there’s an agreement on peace,” said Jubeir.

“We want a two-state solution based on the Arab Peace Initiative and the relevant United Nations resolutions where we have a Palestinian state and living side by side in peace and security. That remains our position.”

Jubeir also said that relations with the United States were unlikely to change under President Joe Biden.

Earlier this week, Biden defended his administration’s decision to not impose sanctions on Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, despite acknowledging that the royal was responsible for the murder of US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

In an interview with ABC News aired in parts on Wednesday, Biden credited himself for releasing the US intelligence community’s findings on the killing but said sanctioning bin Salman would have been unprecedented.

Jubeir told Arab News, “Our relationship with the US is a strategic relationship. We have economic interests and financial interests. We work to fight extremism and terrorism.”

“The (Biden) administration has made it very, very clear that it is committed to the defense of Saudi Arabia, that it is committed to defending Saudi against external threats,” he said.

“So, I really don’t see much of a change between this administration and the previous administration in terms of their commitment to Saudi Arabia.”

With regard to the US returning to the nuclear deal with Iran, the minister said, “I believe they have made it clear that they want Iran to go back to the nuclear agreement and they want a nuclear agreement that is, to quote Secretary of State [Antony] Blinken, ‘stronger and longer’.

“This is something that we’ve been advocating since the advent of this deal.”

However, the minister criticised the US decision to remove Yemen’s Houthi movement from its international terror list.

In his view, the US decision to remove the Houthis from its international terrorism list, on the same day the Yemeni separatists attacked the civilian airport in Abha in Saudi Arabia, would make little difference to the international effort to provide aid to the country.

“We have made this very clear to our friends in Europe and to the US as well as to the United Nations special envoy,” Al-Jubeir said.

“So, the message the position from our perspective with regards to the Houthis is very clear: they belong on a terrorism list and nobody should deal with them,” he said.

Jubeir also defended Saudi Arabia’s record on human rights, saying the kingdom had made “great strides”.

“Our view is that Saudi Arabia has made great strides in human rights. Fifty years ago, we had no schools for women; today 55 percent of college students are women. Seventy years ago, we had maybe 90 percent illiteracy rates; today everybody reads and writes and goes to school,” he said.