Israel Saudi Arabia reaffirms support for Palestinians

SDA

5.2.2025 - 07:35

Displaced Palestinians walk on a street in the center of the Gaza Strip to return to their homes in the northern Gaza Strip after the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. Photo: Abdel Kareem Hana/AP/dpa
Displaced Palestinians walk on a street in the center of the Gaza Strip to return to their homes in the northern Gaza Strip after the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. Photo: Abdel Kareem Hana/AP/dpa
Keystone

Saudi Arabia has reaffirmed its support for the Palestinians. It was responding to a public push by US President Donald Trump to bring the Gaza Strip under US control and "resettle" Palestinians living there.

Keystone-SDA

The Kingdom opposes "any violation of the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, whether through Israeli settlement policy, annexation of land or attempts to expel the Palestinian people from their land", according to a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Riyadh.

The statement did not explicitly refer to Trump's press conference in Washington, in which he had presented his plan for the Gaza Strip alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shortly beforehand. However, the statement from the State Department was published less than two hours later.

Trump wants the United States to take control of the Gaza Strip and develop the war-torn Palestinian coastal region economically. Trump wants the approximately two million Palestinians for whom the Gaza Strip is home to live in other Arab states in the region in future.

Saudi Arabia's leadership also made it clear that it continues to regard the establishment of an independent Palestinian state as a prerequisite for establishing diplomatic relations with Israel. The aim is the creation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital and the end of the Israeli occupation, the Foreign Ministry stated. The Saudi Arabian government thus rejected Trump's statement, who had answered a journalist's question before his meeting with Netanyahu by saying that Saudi Arabia was not calling for a Palestinian state.

Trump seeks rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia

According to Trump and Netanyahu, they are working on normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Such a rapprochement had already begun in the summer of 2023. The efforts were ended shortly afterwards by the terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas and other extremist groups on October 7, 2023, which triggered the Gaza War with tens of thousands of deaths and injuries.

"I believe peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia is not only possible, I believe it will come," Netanyahu said after the meeting with Trump at the White House. "The Saudi leadership is interested in achieving it and we will try. I believe we will succeed."

In 2020, during his first term in office, Trump initiated the so-called Abraham Accords to normalize relations between Israel and several Arab states - a historic breakthrough at the time.