In a few weeks, US President Donald Trump has indirectly obstructed, with words and deeds, the foreign policy path that Riyadh has been shaping in the Middle East for years. The Saudi Ambassador to the UK, in an Al Arabiya interview, responded by offering a synthesis of Riyadh’s ongoing effort to find a middle ground between conflicting sides, “My government’s position is that we would welcome a riviera in Gaza. I think that would be wonderful (…) but we’re not going to do it by removing the Palestinian people”.
Whether building a riviera in Gaza is a real plan for Washington, Saudi Arabia and the US currently differ on how to remake the Middle East – and this is not a small issue for these traditional allies and friends. The way in which Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) will now handle his political relationship with Washington will test his regional and domestic leadership aspirations. More broadly, MBS’s posture vis-à-vis Trump today will define the balances of power in the Middle East of tomorrow.
Opposite policies
Before the October 7th attack, Saudi Arabia was close to a normalization deal with Israel: Despite the war in Gaza, Riyadh’s door was not completely blocked. The Kingdom has repeated, since the Israel-Hamas war broke out, that the establishment of a Palestinian state represented the precondition to any normalization deal. Saudi Arabia was also continuing a de-escalation process with Iran, which began in 2023, and was still interested, once the Red Sea crisis solves, in resuming talks with the Iranian-backed Houthis to reach a ceasefire in Yemen.
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However, Trump has said, and done, exactly the opposite of Saudi policy so far. The US President proposes “to own and rebuild” Gaza to transform it into the “riviera of the Middle East”, adding that Palestinians from Gaza should leave. He said that Egypt and Jordan should take Gaza’s population, who would not have the right to return home after reconstruction. Also, the US presidency will announce its position on West Bank annexation by Israel, another traditional flashpoint and key piece of the mosaic.
The suggested riviera is not a state for the Palestinians: Trump’s remarks are a prominent shift from the two state-solution the US has advocated for decades and aligns the American political discourse to that of the current Israeli government. The differences with Riyadh do not stop here. Since the inauguration of the new President, the White House has also reinstated the “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran and again designated Yemen’s Houthis (Ansar Allah) as a foreign terrorist organization through an executive order, thus making it even more difficult to resume negotiations in Yemen.
The new fractured picture
The prospect of Saudi normalization with Israel had survived even the Gaza war, but it cannot survive the riviera plan as it is currently elaborated. Politics is the art of the possible, but getting rid of the Palestinian cause would mean that MBS’s leadership would lose face, and this is something no Arab ruler can cope with.
Furthermore, after October 7th, Saudi Arabia launched a diplomatic initiative for the establishment of a Palestinian state, called the Global Alliance for the Implementation of the two-state solution. On the one hand, the Saudi political move aimed to revive the Arab Peace Initiative that Riyadh drafted in 2002. On the other hand, MBS considers a Saudi-led diplomatic mobilization on this topic as the only way to prepare the ground for the future normalization with Israel, showing the Saudis, and Arab and Islamic public opinion, that the Kingdom, the birthplace of Islam, has not abandoned the Palestinian cause.
Official Saudi reactions to Trump’s plan provides a taste of the firm stance taken by Riyadh. The Saudi foreign minister drafted a joint statement with Egypt, Jordan, the UAE and Qatar’s counterparts to reject the hypothesis of a forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza. After Trump’s remarks and the endorsement of the Israeli Prime Minister, Riyadh quickly reacted by condemning the proposal, reiterating that it will not recognize Israel until a Palestinian state is established.
The mediator prince?
In such a surreal debate, a possible role for Saudi Arabia is that of the mediator. For MBS, striking a balance about Gaza’s future would safeguard the priority of a stable Middle East, his leadership’s aspirations in the region, and the alliance with the US.
It is not by chance that Saudi Arabia has started to play the Arab unity card to stem the explosive US position, and its immediate political effects on the region. The informal summit on Gaza that Riyadh hosted on February 21th (with Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf monarchies), and the extraordinary summit on the Middle East that Egypt will organize on March 4th aim to emphasize the Saudi-backed unity among Arabs. Moreover, Egypt and Jordan’s stability is a red line for the Kingdom, something that a massive arrival of people from Gaza would likely threaten.
In geopolitical terms, Riyadh has significantly benefitted from the weakening of Teheran and its “axis of resistance” because of Israel’s wars. However, the Saudi Kingdom cannot risk losing ground vis-à-vis Iran and Turkey, when it comes to the Palestinian cause and the defense of the Arab people.
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In this sensitive negotiation, the Saudi Crown Prince will try to be smarter than Trump. A direct US role in Gaza would help Saudi Arabia to offset some uncomfortable issues. Riyadh has always been aware that the financial costs of Gaza’s reconstruction will partially fall on the Gulf monarchies; but the Saudis are still reluctant to imagine a post-conflict military presence on the ground, even as part of an Arab multinational force. Who will run the Gaza Strip during the reconstruction phase is another prominent, and difficult, point that needs to be addressed. Saudi Arabia supports the Palestinian Authority (PA), but it is unlikely the PA would be able to provide security in Gaza: Riyadh (and the UAE and Bahrain who signed the Abraham Accords with Israel) can’t accept Hamas’ presence on the ground.
As the degree of uncertainty is still high, a key question is, how open will Trump be to revising his riviera proposal, and how much leverage will Riyadh have on its American ally. The even bigger question is, to what extent can Saudi Arabia say ‘no’ to the White House’s requests. There is no doubt that this is a rocky new era in US-Saudi relations.