Antony J. Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, said on Monday that the leader of Saudi Arabia told him that establishing diplomatic recognition between the kingdom and Israel was still possible, but it required an end to the war in Gaza and practical steps toward a Palestinian state.
“There’s a clear interest here in pursuing that,” Mr. Blinken said after meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia. “There’s a clear interest in the region in pursuing that.”
Mr. Blinken’s remarks were the strongest public statement yet that normalization of ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel — a move that could set up a political realignment of Middle East powers and secure U.S. assistance for a Saudi civilian nuclear program — remained a possibility since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks, which set off the ongoing fighting in the Gaza Strip.
Mr. Blinken also said that Prince Mohammed and other leaders with whom he had met in the region said they were willing to coordinate and work together “to help Gaza stabilize and recover, to chart a political path forward for the Palestinians and to work toward long-term peace, security and stability in the region as a whole.”
All the leaders, he added, were ready to “make the necessary commitments.”
Mr. Blinken and other aides of President Biden are seeking to revive discussions about normalizing relations with Israel, in the hopes that such a step might prod the Israelis to agree to work toward establishing a Palestinian state.
But the heavy death toll in Gaza, where health officials say more than 22,000 people have been killed in Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks, has inflamed anti-Israel sentiments in Saudi Arabia and other nations in the region. That will make it more difficult for Prince Mohammed to navigate a path to normalizing relations between Riyadh and Jerusalem, should he choose to try.
Additionally, some senior Israeli officials oppose the notion of a Palestinian state or greater rights for Palestinians — and many Israeli citizens agree with them, given the horror of the attacks in October.
Mr. Blinken met with Prince Mohammed for about 90 minutes at the prince’s luxury winter camp in the remote oasis of Al Ula, in the kingdom’s western desert. After speaking to reporters traveling with him on the tarmac at the Al Ula airport, Mr. Blinken boarded his airplane to fly to Tel Aviv, where he plans to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials on Tuesday.
Before landing in Saudi Arabia, Mr. Blinken had talks in Abu Dhabi with Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the ruler of the United Arab Emirates, to discuss the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the need to prevent the Israel-Gaza war from spreading across the region, a State Department spokesman said.
Mr. Blinken emphasized the “continued U.S. commitment to securing lasting regional peace that ensures Israel’s security and advances the establishment of an independent Palestinian state,” the spokesman, Matthew Miller, said in a statement.
The Biden administration has insisted that Israel help forge a realistic path to a Palestinian state, arguing that Israel’s yearslong security policy on the Palestinians appears to have failed, as seen by the scale of the Oct. 7 attacks. Establishing a Palestinian state is a longstanding policy goal of the United States, but efforts toward achieving it had ebbed since the Obama administration.
Mr. Blinken and Sheikh Mohammed also spoke about the civil war in Sudan and “preventing further widespread civilian harm” there, Mr. Miller said.
The New York Times reported in September that the Emirates had been sending weapons to the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group that is battling the regular army in Sudan, bringing the arms into the country through a remote military air base across the border in Chad. Mr. Blinken said in December that the two warring armies and associated militias in Sudan were all committing war crimes.
The Emirates is one of the biggest buyers of American arms and is viewed by the U.S. government as a security partner, but the country and the Biden administration are at odds over several major security issues, including the Emirates’ role in the Sudan war and its efforts to forge important military and economic partnerships with China.
Soon after landing in Saudi Arabia on Monday afternoon, Mr. Blinken met briefly in the Al Ula airport lounge with Josep Borrell, the European Union’s top diplomat, to “discuss efforts to prevent the conflict from spreading and secure a lasting peace for the region,” Mr. Miller said. Mr. Borrell was leaving Al Ula after meeting with Prince Mohammed.
Mr. Blinken landed in Turkey on Friday for the start of a weeklong trip across the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East.
