US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman earlier this week . [Picture: Amer Hilabi/AFP via Getty Images]
The tide is turning against the colonial settlement ‘Israel’ as global leaders ramp up pressure on the terrorist regime in Tel Aviv to cease attacks on Palestine.
Most recently, Saudi Arabia refused to push ahead with recognition until the 1967 borders of Palestine were restored. This was during a visit by US secretary of state Anthony Blinken – his fifth since the Second Nakba began in October – this week.
“[The] Kingdom has communicated its firm position to the U.S. administration that there will be no diplomatic relations with Israel unless an independent Palestinian state is recognized on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital,” read a statement by Riyadh’s foreign ministry on Wednesday.
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Normalisation
Mere months before the latest round of bombardment, it was rumoured that the Kingdom was mulling normalisation with Israel. The Arab Accords in recent years saw ‘peace talks’ between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.
As recently as September 2023, Saudi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Fox
News that normalised relations with Israel “get closer” every day. From recent statements it
had appeared the country took an about-turn, but normalisation remains on the agenda.
After meeting with the monarch on Tuesday, Blinken confirmed normalisation remained on the table. “With regard specifically to normalisation, the crown prince reiterated Saudi Arabia’s strong interest in pursuing that,” he said.
“But he also made clear what he had said to me before, which is that to do that, two things are required: an end to the conflict in Gaza; and a clear, credible, time-bound path to the establishment of a Palestinian state,” he added.
Under a two-state solution, the idea of which Saudi Arabia and Palestinian officials have supported, the Occupier and Palestine are envisioned to coexist according to the borders of 1967. However, the former has refused to compromise, continuing to illegally encroach on
the West Bank and besiege the Gaza Strip.
Since unleashing hell on Gaza in October, the number of Palestinians killed by Israel has climbed to 27 708 people. A further 67 147 were wounded in Israeli attacks. In this so-called ‘war’, the death toll in Israel remains unchanged at 1 139.
