Senior Saudi Royal Turns Up Heat on ‘Failed’ Palestinian Leaders

(Bloomberg) -- A senior Saudi prince accused the Palestinian leadership of squandering decades of opportunities to make peace with Israel, a once-unthinkable tongue-lashing that dramatizes how strained relations have become as the kingdom softens its traditional hostility toward the majority-Jewish state.

Prince Bandar bin Sultan also accused the Palestinians of cozying up to two of Saudi Arabia's present-day foes -- Iran and Turkey.

The prince, a former ambassador to the U.S., called the Palestinian leaders “failures” during a televised interview spread over three evenings on Saudi channel Al-Arabiya TV. He also criticized them for accusing Gulf countries of betrayal after the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain agreed to establish ties with Israel last month.

“The ingratitude or lack of loyalty that we've seen” won't lessen the kingdom's support for the Palestinian people, the prince said in the last segment broadcast on Wednesday. But as for their leaders, “it's difficult for you to trust them or think you can do something to serve Palestine with them around.”

Shared Distrust

The interview made Prince Bandar the most prominent Saudi figure to so strongly criticize the Palestinian leadership, though such rhetoric has grown increasingly common in the kingdom. Last month, Saudi newspaper columnists praised the regional deals with Israel, a notable departure from decades of demonizing the country. A shared distrust of Iran is a foundation of those pacts.

Saudi Arabia isn't likely to establish its own ties with Israel imminently, but as nationalist sentiment rises, some Saudis say they no longer feel an affinity for the “Palestinian cause,” a touchstone in the Arab world for decades.

“All what we've kept hearing about is the Palestinian cause, support the Palestinian cause, and nothing ever happened,” said Fahad Abdulrahman, a 41-year-old businessman. “On the contrary, this issue has caused economic and political damage to us.”

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There has been no official Palestinian reaction. Saeb Erekat, the secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said he'd reserve comment until all three segments have been aired.

Saudi Arabia has historically been a chief champion and benefactor of the Palestinian cause. In 2002, it authored a regional peace initiative that called for the establishment of a Palestinian state within boundaries the Palestinian leadership sought. Normalization of Arab states' ties with Israel should come as part of a resolution of that conflict, and not an antecedent, according to the blueprint.

Yet over the past decade, the Palestinians have watched their cause get shunted to the sidelines as the region descended into the upheaval of the Arab Spring and the bloody conflicts in places like Syria, Libya and Yemen that followed. The centrality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Middle East strife was further diminished by Gulf Arab states' fear of Iran's growing influence and nuclear ambitions.

Bad Faith

In the meantime, more than a quarter-century of on-again, off-again negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians went nowhere. Most recently, the Palestinians have rejected the Trump administration's Middle East peace plan, which favors Israel's demands, as a bad-faith proposal.

During the interview, Prince Bandar shared tales of his efforts to help resolve the conflict, describing what he viewed as numerous lost chances for breakthroughs. He also accused Palestinian leaders of turning away from their traditional allies and shifting closer to Saudi Arabia's regional rivals.

Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, dismissed the notion that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas could make Turkey, Qatar and Iran his main allies. Doing so, Shikaki reasoned, would go against Abbas's commitment to a two-state solution reached with the help of American and European partners.

“He can't go all the way with the Turks and the Qataris, and definitely he can't touch Iran at all. And at the same time he can't keep his allies, he's lost them,” Shikaki said. “What they have done is indeed a vote of no confidence in him.”

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