Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that he does not personally care about what he referred to as the “Palestinian issue”, according to a report in The Atlantic.
According to the Atlantic report, MBS told Blinken that “he does not personally care about the Palestinian issue.” The report said that MBS told this to Blinken during his visit to Saudi Arabia in January. The two leaders, however, discussed the prospect of Saudi Arabia normalizing ties with Israel amid the Gaza War.
Months earlier, Riyadh had appeared to be making progress in forming ties with Israel during US-led discussions, which were later derailed by the outbreak of war on 7 October.
If a normalisation deal were to occur, the crown prince expressed to Blinken a desire for calm in Gaza.
According to The Atlantic, Blinken enquired whether the Saudis could tolerate Israel periodically re-entering the territory to strike the besieged Gaza Strip.
“They can come back in six months, a year, but not on the back end of my signing something like this,” Mohammed bin Salman responded.
“Seventy percent of my population is younger than me,” the crown prince explained to Blinken.
“For most of them, they never really knew much about the Palestinian issue. And so they’re being introduced to it for the first time through this conflict. It’s a huge problem. Do I care personally about the Palestinian issue? I don’t, but my people do, so I need to make sure this is meaningful.”
