The Biden Administration is belatedly trying to revive the progress of the Abraham Accords by negotiating a peace and normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Such a deal would almost certainly have happened had Donald Trump won the 2020 election. There has been no progress since Biden took office, and he has made things worse by isolating the Saudis, in deference to Democrats' resentment against the Saudi monarchy for daring to work closely with Trump.

Now, with an election looming, Biden is trying to make the Saudi deal happen. He has another motive: if he can get Israel to go along with his effort, he might have leverage to stop an Israeli strike on Iran, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said is an option despite Biden's effort to revive the doomed Iran nuclear deal.

I have been skeptical of this effort from the start, mostly because of how loudly Biden was advertising it. That's not how one does a deal in the Middle East: you don't proclaim your final goals at the outset, because you're going to get pushed away from them in negotiations. To me, this was mostly about domestic politics. Likewise with the positive response from Netanyahu, who is in a tight position at home -- though he also wants to appear open to any Arab peace deal for strategic reasons, and wants to use any opportunity to flatter Biden, who is otherwise inclined to be hostile to Netanyahu's government.

The Saudis are playing this perfectly. They don't need a deal. But they are raising the price for a deal, because Biden is desperate to reach one. So a top Saudi diplomat has announced this week that the only way peace is happening is if there is a Palestinian state. That is a price Israel can't (and shouldn't) pay at the moment, and it is also a higher price than Israel paid for any of the other Abraham Accords agreements, which largely ignored Palestinians' hard-line demands.

A deal remains in everyone's interests. But Israel is not going to be tied down to a process that prevents it from striking Iran, and it is not going to agree to a Palestinian state while Mahmoud Abbas is still subsidizing terrorists, or while Hamas is working with Iran. The Saudis don't need a deal and are happy to work quietly with Israel on geopolitical and economic issues, while raising the price of peace and normalization, which a future U.S. administration might deliver.

One hopes for the best. But I feel confirmed in my skepticism.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/only-way-to-solve-conflict-is-independent-palestinian-state-says-top-saudi-diplomat/