Israel has decided to block a delegation of Middle Eastern foreign ministers led by Saudi Arabia’s top diplomat from making a landmark visit to the West Bank, a senior Israeli official told The Times of Israel on Friday.
The foreign ministers from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan were slated to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on Sunday.
The senior Israeli official said that the PA was planning to use the delegation’s visit to “promote the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
“Israel will not cooperate with moves designed to harm it and its security,” the Israeli official asserted, claiming that a Palestinian state would become “a terrorist state in the heart of the Land of Israel.”
The Arab ministers were not planning to visit Israel, but because Israel controls the borders of the West Bank, its approval is required for them to enter the territory.
The visit by Prince Faisal bin Farhan was supposed to be the first by a Saudi foreign minister since Israel took over the West Bank in 1967.
Illustrative: Palestinians holding Israeli work permits crossing from the West Bank into Israel through the Eyal checkpoint, near the West Bank city of Qalqilya. November 21, 2013. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)
The Israeli entry ban is likely the further strain Israel’s relations with its Arab neighbors, which have already deteriorated significantly since the outbreak of the Gaza war.
The move will also likely raise further questions over the legitimacy of Israel’s control of the West Bank.
In attempting to justify the decision, the senior Israeli official noted that the PA has yet to condemn Hamas’s October 7 onslaught and accused Ramallah of violating agreements with Israel.
The PA has indeed yet to explicitly condemn the October 7 attack, instead issuing more vague condemnations of violence against all civilians, as Israel’s war in Gaza intensified. More recently, though, Abbas has issued repeated condemnations of Hamas, calling on the terror group to release the remaining hostages, disarm and give up control of the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, Israel continues to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenues that it is supposed to transfer to Ramallah each month in violation of the Oslo Accords. Jerusalem says it withholds some of the funds to offset payments the PA makes to the families of Palestinian security prisoners and slain attackers. Abbas signed a decree in February ending the conditioning of such payments on the length of one’s prison sentence.
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa, center, and Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, right, speak to Saudi’s Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud, during the Cairo Ministerial Conference to Enhance the Humanitarian Response in Gaza, in Cairo, Egypt, Monday, Dec. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)
Palestinian ambassador to Saudi Arabia Mazen Ghoneim told Saudi state-backed Al Arabiya that the rare joint ministerial visit comes as the war in Gaza nears its 20th month, and Ghoneim said it marks “a clear message [that] the Palestinian cause is a central issue to Arabs and Muslims.”
Next month, Saudi Arabia and France will co-chair an international conference meant to resurrect the two-state solution at the United Nations headquarters in New York. France is considering recognizing a Palestinian state during the confab. Israel is already taking steps, it says are aimed at combating the effort, including establishing new settlements throughout the West Bank to further harm efforts to advance a two-state solution.
Sunday’s visit was supposed to mark a further boost to the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority, which has faced pressure from Arab and Western allies to reform, as they push for the body to replace Hamas as the governing authority in the Gaza Strip after the war. Israel has blocked such a transition, but is facing mounting pushback from Arab allies, who have expressed willingness to assist in the post-war management of Gaza if Jerusalem allows Ramallah to gain a foothold there.
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