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PALESTINE

Thu 07 Sep 2023 4:09 pm - Jerusalem Time

Washington considers Palestinians should present more reasonable demands to Reyadh talks

Today, Thursday, Al Quds learned from an informed source that the US President Joe Biden's administration believes that the Palestinian demands presented in the Riyadh talks are the maximum demands, which makes it very difficult for the administration to meet them at the present time, and that it is more useful for the Palestinians to make "more Reasonable" demands that  serves to stop the escalation, reduce violence, improve the daily lives of the Palestinians, and freeze unilateral steps (by the Palestinian and Israeli sides) that complicate the possibilities of reaching a two-state solution, which is the goal of the United States to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.


On Thursday, the British BBC revealed that among the Palestinian demands in the event of a tripartite agreement that includes the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel, includes more political and security control over the lands in the occupied West Bank and a financial increase of hundreds of millions of dollars to support The Palestinian Authority, which suffers from a significant shortage of financial resources.


A team of senior Palestinian officials in Riyadh — including Palestinian intelligence chief Majed Faraj and Hussein al-Sheikh, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization — met Saudi national security adviser Musaed al-Aiban on Wednesday, according to Palestinian sources, to discuss Palestinian demands as part of any grand bargain. To reach it, and that was before any meeting with the American officials who went to Riyadh for the same purpose.


Multiple reports, statements and discussions have been reported in the American media and on the official press platforms in the White House and the US State Department since last July about the US efforts to reach a historic agreement to normalize Saudi-Israeli relations, in return for major security arrangements between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. and making Israeli concessions in the occupied Palestinian territories.


But the possibility of an agreement seems remote at the moment, as the White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said on Tuesday: "We do not expect any announcements or imminent breakthroughs in the coming period."


There is speculation in Washington about a major American plan for the historic reorganization of relations in the Middle East, by resuming American shuttle diplomacy similar to the tours of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the seventies of the last century prior to reaching the Camp David agreement between Egypt and Israel.


Experts believe that US President Joe Biden is likely to see the Saudi-Israeli agreement as a major foreign policy prize that he can present to voters before next year's elections.


In return for recognizing Israel, Saudi Arabia is said to be demanding US guarantees of access to advanced US weapons and a civilian nuclear program that includes uranium enrichment at home, which is controversial in Washington, where lawmakers from both parties oppose it.


According to experts, Israel, for its part, will benefit from trade and defense relations with the major Arab power, and more historical integration that it has always sought in the region, in the wake of other Arab normalization agreements reached in 2020.


Experts also believe that for any agreement to succeed, it must be seen as including major Israeli concessions to the Palestinians, as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman needs to mollify his people — historically opposed to Israel and deeply sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.


At the same time, President Biden will also need to demonstrate that he has made significant gains for the Palestinians to gain support from his Democratic Party. Israel's current ultra-nationalist ruling coalition, which they see as exacerbating tensions in the West Bank and sparking unprecedented instability within Israel itself.


According to the BBC, a list of Palestinian demands in exchange for participation in the US-backed process was identified during a meeting with US Assistant Secretary of State Barbara Leaf last week in Amman, and according to what a Palestinian official told the network, the demands include: Transferring parts of the West Bank currently under full Israeli control (known as Area C under the Oslo peace accords of the 1990s) to Palestinian Authority rule; a "complete halt" to Israeli settlement growth in the West Bank; Resuming Saudi financial support to the Palestinian Authority, which has slowed since 2016 and stopped completely three years ago, to about $200 million annually; the reopening of the US Consulate in Jerusalem — the diplomatic mission to the Palestinians — that was closed by President Donald Trump, and the resumption of US-brokered negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians from where they left off under then-Secretary of State John Kerry in 2014.


In turn, an American official, commenting on the alleged Palestinian demands, said that he was not aware of this, and that "the administration's record shows that we are not talking about the content of negotiations that take place behind closed doors, and I only say that McGurk and Leaf's visit was arranged in advance, and it deals with bilateral Saudi-American relations."

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Washington considers Palestinians should present more reasonable demands to Reyadh talks

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