Riyadh hosts senior officials at the White House and State Department in the same week that senior Palestinian officials visit the Saudi capital to discuss the high-stakes agreement.

According to the Times of Israel website, a delegation of senior American officials is scheduled to travel to Riyadh this week to meet with their Saudi counterparts to discuss a possible normalization agreement between the Gulf kingdom and Israel.

The visit by White House Coordinator for the Middle East Brett McGurk and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara A. Leaf comes just over a month after US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan visited Saudi Arabia with the same goal, indicating Washington's continued determination to mediate a solution. An elusive agreement. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also visited Riyadh on the same mission in June.

The visit of McGurk and Leaf coincides with the visit of a Palestinian delegation headed by the Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hussein Al-Sheikh, who will be in Riyadh to discuss what Ramallah hopes to gain from the Saudi-Israeli normalization agreement, according to the two officials.

Saudi Arabia is willing to abandon its long-held public position against normalization with Israel in the absence of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but Riyadh is still not expected to agree to an agreement with Israel that does not include significant progress toward Palestinian sovereignty, according to officials familiar with the matter.

Last week, three officials told The Times of Israel that the Palestinian Authority is seeking “irreversible” steps that would advance its statehood efforts in the context of negotiations for a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The proposed steps include US support for the recognition of the Palestinian state in the United Nations, reopening its consulate in Jerusalem that has historically served the Palestinians, repealing legislation in Congress that considers the Palestinian Authority a terrorist organization, transferring lands in the West Bank from Israeli to Palestinian sovereignty, and demolishing illegal settlement outposts in West Bank.

These steps would be major victories for the Palestinian Authority, which has enjoyed few diplomatic achievements in recent years. However, it is a far cry from the far-reaching demands that Ramallah has long raised, highlighting its diminishing political standing at home and abroad.

Al-Sheikh discussed the measures with Leaf, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, during a meeting last week, and received a largely lukewarm response, according to a Palestinian official.

Biden administration officials rejected Palestinian proposals regarding the United States, encouraging the Palestinian Authority to moderate its requests and direct them toward Israel instead.

But any major initiatives for the Palestinians are almost certain to be opposed by some in Netanyahu's hard-line government. Last week, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that the idea of Israel making concessions to the Palestinians as part of a normalization agreement is a “fantasy.”

While the agreement is expected to include a Palestinian component, the bulk of Saudi demands are directed at the United States, and the focus has been on the negotiations so far between the Biden administration and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Riyadh is seeking to conclude a mutual security treaty similar to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), obligating the United States to defend Saudi Arabia if the latter is attacked, and to have a civilian nuclear program supported by the United States in Saudi Arabia, and to have the ability to purchase more advanced weapons from Washington.

In return, the United States is looking forward to Riyadh significantly reducing its economic and military relations with China and Russia and strengthening the truce that ended the civil war in Yemen.

Any new US treaty with Saudi Arabia will require the support of two-thirds of the Senate, a daunting task given Republicans' reluctance to give Biden a foreign policy victory and concern among Democrats about Riyadh's human rights record.