Axios revealed on Friday morning that US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed last week that “the huge deal with Saudi Arabia must be based on the principle of preserving the possibilities of reaching an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement in the future, according to an Israeli official.” Another source saw the meeting, but the details still need to be worked out,” according to the website.

The Biden administration is seeking to reach a massive deal with Saudi Arabia and Israel before the 2024 presidential campaign takes over Biden's agenda.

The White House made clear to the Israeli government that it would have to make significant concessions to the Palestinians as part of a deal with Saudi Arabia that includes normalization between the kingdom and Israel.

Secretary of State Tony Blinken claimed that Saudi leaders told him that the Palestinian issue would play a central role in any future agreement with Israel.

“The White House official in charge of the Middle East file, Brett McGurk, and Biden’s senior advisor, Amos Hochstein, held a preparatory meeting with Netanyahu’s aides on Tuesday, September 19, the night before the two leaders’ meeting, two American and Israeli officials told the website.

McGurk and Hochstein asked Netanyahu's aides what the prime minister would tell Biden about the concessions he wants to make to the Palestinians as part of the mega deal with Saudi Arabia.

The site claims that, according to American and Israeli officials, Netanyahu's aides refrained from going into details and said that the prime minister would talk about the matter privately with the president. According to the site, American and Israeli officials (later) said that when Biden and Netanyahu met, a large part of their meeting focused on... It continued for an hour on the Palestinian element of the deal.

Biden did not present Netanyahu with a list of demands for concessions to the Palestinians, but he told the prime minister that he wanted Israel to take steps that would keep the option of a two-state solution with the Palestinians open, according to an Israeli official and an Israeli official, and that Netanyahu agreed to the idea of ​​taking steps to keep the door open for an agreement. A future peace with the Palestinians.

It is noteworthy that after his meeting with Biden last week in New York, Netanyahu said publicly that "the Palestinians should be part of the agreement between the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia, but they should not have the right to object to it."

Netanyahu has long shied away from expressing his support for the idea of ​​a two-state solution, and has been talking instead about granting the Palestinians “limited sovereignty” in the West Bank, with Israel retaining control over the security aspect.

In turn, the US State Department confirmed, on Tuesday (9/26), that “the Saudi and Palestinian demands regarding any final agreement between the Kingdom and Israel included an important Palestinian element, which must be present in any potential normalization agreement.”

Ministry spokesman Matthew Miller indicated, in response to a journalist's question, that "the US President and the Secretary of State spent an important time working on the issue of normalization" between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

“One of the things we have heard in our engagement with the Palestinians and which we have communicated on their behalf to our Israeli counterparts is that ‘there must be a significant Palestinian element in any final agreement,’” Miller added.

He added: "The Saudi government has made this clear publicly and made it clear to us privately... and this is certainly an issue on the table."

Miller's statements came in conjunction with the first public visit to Saudi Arabia by a senior Israeli official, Tourism Minister Haim Katz, who visited Riyadh to participate in a conference of the United Nations World Tourism Organization.