Washington
\nProminent US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham urged Saudi Arabia and Israel on Tuesday to establish diplomatic ties by the end of the year, warning that the next US administration is unlikely to be able to secure enough votes to support the deal.
\nThe Biden administration is seeking to broker a normalisation accord between the two countries that would include US security guarantees for Gulf state Saudi Arabia, among other bilateral deals between Washington and Riyadh.
\n\u201cWe can get you a treaty through the Senate between the United States and Saudi Arabia, a defense agreement like you have in Japan and Australia, if you do it on President Biden\u2019s watch,\u201d Graham, who is seen as close to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, told reporters in Jerusalem.
\n\u201cThe next president will have a very difficult time getting 67 votes,\u201d he said in reference to the two-thirds majority needed in the US Senate for approving a defense treaty.
\nDemocrat Joe Biden\u2019s term as president will end on Jan. 20. Graham, a longtime senator, is a key Republican in Congress with influence on foreign policy and national security matters.
\nGraham, who met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, said he would travel to Saudi Arabia to meet de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and to the United Arab Emirates for talks with President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
\nThe UAE established relations with Israel in 2020.
\nSaudi officials, including Prince Mohammed, have discussed potentially establishing ties with Israel but over the past year insisted that it include at least the pathway to a Palestinian state, a markedly steeper challenge since the Gaza war erupted.
\nIsraeli-Saudi normalisation could open the door to many other Arab and Muslim-majority nations forging ties with Israel, bolstering regional stability, given Riyadh\u2019 sway in the Muslim world as home to Islam\u2019s two holiest sites in Makkah and Media.
\nTwo-state solution \u2018dead\u2019
\nBut even before the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas that triggered the war, Netanyahu\u2019s right-wing government had rejected a \u201ctwo-state solution\u201d to the conflict with Palestinians.
\nGraham said the two-state solution\u2013an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel\u2013had been \u201cdead\u201d ever since the cross-border assault by Hamas.
\nSaudi Arabia will not recognise Israel without Palestinian state, says Crown Prince
\n\u201cThe Israeli public will not accept a Palestinian state as a result of this barbaric terrorist attack, because it\u2019s rewarding terrorism. I get that,\u201d Graham said, but he added Israel could work with Riyadh, along with the UAE, on the Palestinian file.
\nOver 41,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in Israel\u2019s devastating retaliatory war against Hamas in the coastal enclave, according to Palestinian health authorities.
\nRiyadh has repeatedly called for an end to the war and said the two-state solution and regional stability are interdependent.
\nNetanyahu has said that establishing diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia would lead to a \u201chistoric reconciliation\u201d between Arab states and Israel, and between Islam and Judaism and vowed to pursue an accord.
\nIsrael has diplomatic ties with a few Arab or Muslim-majority states including the UAE, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco.
\nThe two-state solution has also been put further out of reach by the rapid expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which Israel occupied in a 1967 war and which Palestinians want as the core of a future state along with Gaza.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington Prominent US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham urged Saudi Arabia and Israel on Tuesday to establish diplomatic ties by the end of the year, warning that the next US administration is unlikely to be able to secure enough votes to support the deal. The Biden administration is seeking to broker a normalisation accord between the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":71344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71331"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71350,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71331\/revisions\/71350"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}