Saudi Arabia’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman recently told Jewish leaders in New York that he’s fed up with Palestinian leaders who should accept the Trump administration’s proposals on a potential peace agreement with Israel, according to a report Sunday.
“In the last several decades the Palestinian leadership has missed on opportunity after the other and rejected all the peace proposals it was given,” Salman said in a closed-door meeting with heads of Jewish organizations in New York on March 27, Axios reported. “It is about time the Palestinians take the proposals and agree to come to the negotiations table or shut up and stop complaining.”
Axios learned the details of the meeting by obtaining a Israeli foreign ministry cable sent by a diplomat from the Israeli consulate in New York.
The Saudi prince also said in the meeting that the Palestinian issue was not a top priority for the Saudi government or with the public. He said Saudi Arabia “has much more urgent and important issues to deal with” like confronting Iran’s influence in the Middle East.
A source who was briefed on the meeting told Axios the attendees were stunned when they heard Salman’s critical comments of Palestinian leadership.
“People literally fell off their chairs,” the source said.
The potential development is significant because it’s more evidence that the young Saudi prince, the de facto leader of the country and next in line to the throne, is aiming to develop tighter ties with Israel. Much of the Middle East views Israel as an enemy.
The prince, who is close with the Trump administration, said earlier this month that the Israelis “have the right to have their own land” and that formal relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia could be mutually beneficial.
The two countries still have no formal relations.
In the last year, the White House has been drafting a Israeli-Palestinian peace plan. The U.S. peace team led by Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Jason Greenblatt is nearly finished drafting the plan and discussing how and when to launch it, Axios reports.
The Palestinians have said the U.S. is no longer qualified to sponsor a peace process between Israelis and Palestinians because of President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and move the American embassy there.
