Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told US President Joe Biden that he does not actually care about whether Israel agrees to a two-state solution, according to a report by The Atlantic.
Before the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023, Saudi Arabia and Israel were on the verge of finalizing a historic normalization deal. The outbreak of war put those negotiations on hold, but US Secretary of State Antony Blinken still believes a deal is within reach—albeit with different parameters. Blinken is reportedly pushing for Saudi Arabia to fund Gaza’s reconstruction once the war ends.
The Atlantic further reported that during a conversation with Blinken, bin Salman emphasized that the Biden administration had the best chance of achieving a deal and expressed a desire to move quickly—before the November 2024 US elections, which could bring former President Donald Trump back into power. However, bin Salman made it clear that any deal would hinge on "calm" in Gaza. He signaled that Israel could re-enter Gaza for security operations but only after a cooling-off period: “They can come back in six months, a year, but not on the back end of my signing something like this.”
Explaining his conditional stance on a two-state solution, bin Salman highlighted the generational shift in Saudi attitudes toward the issue. “Seventy percent of my population is younger than me,” said the 38-year-old crown prince. “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.”
However, a Saudi official disputed this account, stating that the details provided in the report were "incorrect."
In the same discussion, bin Salman revealed the internal pressures he faces, saying, “Half my advisers say that the deal is not worth the risk. I could end up getting killed because of this deal.”
