US seeking normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia

The United States said Thursday it was still working on a landmark normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, whose de facto ruler stood firm on the creation of a Palestinian state.

With four months left in President Joe Biden's term, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said Wednesday that Saudi Arabia will work "to establish an independent Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital, and we affirm that the kingdom will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel without one."

The State Department played down the remarks, noting that Saudi Arabia has long made clear it wants a two-state solution and a cease-fire in Gaza.

"Every day that goes by, it gets tougher to accomplish anything. That's just a temporal fact," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters.

"We continue to believe, however, that long term, of course, normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel is in the interests of both countries" and the region, he said.

"We are obviously quite aware of the challenges that we face in getting to those [goals] now. The fighting in Gaza continues to wage on. We continue to work to get a cease-fire," he said.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said earlier this month that he still believed a Saudi-Israel deal was possible before Biden leaves office in January.

Blinken has repeatedly held out the prospect of Saudi normalization as an incentive to Netanyahu, a historic critic of Palestinian statehood who before the Gaza war had cast Israel's growing acceptance by the Arab world as a key achievement.

The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco normalized relations with Israel in 2020 — the first Arab states to do so since Egypt and Jordan decades earlier.

But Saudi Arabia is seen as a key prize for Israel due to its role as guardian of Islam's two holiest cities and its weight within the Arab and Islamic worlds.