It has been several weeks since the news first broke that the United States is reportedly in the early stages of arranging a peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Since then, a wide range of foreign media outlets have published opinion pieces and expert analyses on what could be an unprecedented and monumental shift in Middle Eastern politics.
In reviewing the global media’s examination of the possibility of an agreement between the Muslim kingdom and the Jewish state, it appears that most are skeptical about the prospect of peace within the near future, pointing to a wide range of issues from all involved parties that could hamper such a deal.
In the media’s discussion of the issues concerning the Israeli side of the equation, two interrelated themes dominate its analysis: The Palestinian variable and the ability of the current Israeli government to finalize an agreement with Saudi Arabia.
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The Palestinian Variable: Steps or Statehood?
When discussing the issues that could hamper a final agreement from the Israeli side, the primary focus of the media appears to be the question of the Palestinians.
However, while most media organizations agree that Israel will have to provide the Palestinians with some concrete steps to improve their quality of life before any agreement with Saudi Arabia can be finalized, they seem less certain about what these steps will be.
Some analysts, such as Dion Nissenbaum of the Wall Street Journal and Bader Al-Saif (in an interview with NPR’s Daniel Estrin), point to some form of statehood for the Palestinians as the price that Israel would have to pay in order to guarantee a rapprochement with Saudi Arabia.
As noted by The Washington Post’s Shira Rubin and Karen DeYoung, this is not likely to happen, as a number of Israeli officials have quashed the idea of full statehood for Palestinians at this time.
Related Reading: The Palestinian Authority: Israel’s Unfaithful Partner
However, some observers believe that the gestures Israel will have to make toward the Palestinians stop well short of creating a state and would be more similar to the steps Israel took in the lead up to the Abraham Accords in 2020, when it promised to not annex any of the West Bank for three years.
The Daily Beast’s David Rothkopf echoes this by citing former American ambassador Martin Indyk’s claim that Israel would have to stop any efforts at annexation in order for a deal with Saudi Arabia to go ahead.
For The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman, the significant steps that Israel should take vis-à-vis the Palestinians would be a promise to never annex the West Bank, to not build new settlements or expand the ones that currently exist, to not legalize any settlement outposts and to transfer some of Area C (under Israeli control) to either Area A (under full Palestinian Authority control) or Area B (under the civil control of the Palestinian Authority).
Regardless of which gestures Israel will have to make to the Palestinians, whether they be incremental steps or full-blown statehood, the media is also seemingly quite resolute that the current Israeli government does not have the wherewithal to follow through with such actions in order to facilitate a Saudi-Israel peace agreement.
The Media Takes on the Israeli Government
A dominant theme in the media’s analysis of the rumored peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia is that the current Israeli government, deemed to be the “most right-wing in Israel’s history,” will be unable to reach a final agreement with Saudi Arabia and the United States due to the position of some extreme nationalist members of the cabinet, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir in particular.
For Jennifer Rubin in The Washington Post, it “beggars belief” that Smotrich or Ben Gvir will support any Israeli concessions to the Palestinians at all and this will be one of the factors to ultimately doom any peace agreement.
While agreeing that this current government is unable to consummate an agreement with Saudi Arabia, the Daily Beast’s David Rothkopf and Dan Perry & Gilead Sher in Newsweek both take it one step further, contending that a peace agreement might collapse Israel’s coalition altogether and cause it to be replaced with more moderate parties.
However, to temper the media’s pessimism about the current Israeli government’s ability to reach a deal with Saudi Arabia, it should be noted that Smotrich was supportive of the Abraham Accords (including the concessions to the Palestinians that were made at the time) and has stated his support for a future agreement with the Saudis.
Thus, while the media seems unanimous in counting the Israeli government as a factor in the future failure of an agreement, the reality may be more nuanced and complex than is portrayed.
What’s Next for Media Coverage of the Israel-Saudi Arabia Deal?
As long as rumors regarding a possible Israel-Saudi Arabia agreement continue to swirl, the international media will continue to dedicate space to conjectures about the likelihood of such a deal coming to fruition as well as which obstacles stand in its way.
As most of the mainstream media has noted, the obstacles standing in the way of an agreement come from all three parties. Will Saudi Arabia’s insistence on a civilian nuclear program, a defense treaty with the US and and greater access to American weapons be too demanding and leave them with nothing? Will the Biden administration be willing and able to shepherd through Congress far reaching guarantees to Saudi Arabia? Will Israel’s concessions to the Palestinians be enough for this agreement to come to fruition?
It is imperative that the media maintains this course of providing their readers with a full picture of all the potential pitfalls that lie ahead for future negotiations.
If news organizations fail to do so and begin to focus on Israel as the sole fly in the ointment for a successful deal, they will not only be doing their readers a disservice but will also be wrongly absolving two parties of their culpability in the failure of the negotiations while laying an excessive amount of guilt on one.
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Photo Credits:
- Roman Kubanskiy via Wikimedia Commons
- World Economic Forum via Flickr
