Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan will visit the occupied West Bank this weekend, making him the highest ranking Saudi official to visit in almost 60 years, the Palestinian Authority (PA) revealed on Friday.

Bin Farhan will lead a ministerial delegation comprised of his counterparts in Jordan, Egypt, and other Arab nations, the Palestinian ambassador to Saudi Arabia told local media, adding that the trip is intended to convey the centrality of the Palestinian cause to Arabs and Muslims.

The move appears similar to the trip bin Farhan organised to Washington in the early months of Israel’s war on Gaza, in a bid to showcase a united Arab front in support of a ceasefire.

It also appears to be an attempt at lending credibility to the PA as an alternative to Hamas in Gaza, despite the PA’s plummeting popularity among Palestinians.

The trip is rare and unusual, given that the last time a Saudi official visited Ramallah, he had been appointed a non-resident ambassador to Palestine.

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Nayef al-Sudairi arrived just weeks before the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel, and before him, King Faisal had visited in 1966.

Those attacks were intended to and indeed derailed Saudi-Israeli normalisation talks, Hamas officials revealed over the course of the war.

With the kingdom being the de facto leader of the Arab world, it can set an agenda with the kind of influence few of its neighbours possess – and normalising with Israel would have likely dashed ambitions for Palestinian statehood.

The Times of Israel reported on Friday evening that Israel would block Farhan and his delegation’s visit. Israel has control of the occupied West Bank’s land border with Jordan.

If Israel follows through on the threat, it could further strain relations with Riyadh and other regional countries.

Since 2023, Saudi Arabia has made it clear that normalisation would only be pursued with a clear pathway to a Palestinian state.

Earlier this year, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called Israel’s now 19-month-long war on Gaza a “genocide”, echoing assessments by the United Nations and countless rights organisations, among other leading historians and experts.

More than 54,000 Palestinians have been killed so far, with some experts believing the figure to be a significant undercount.

Next month, a meeting in New York co-chaired by Saudi Arabia and France is expected to outline the necessity of establishing a Palestinian state, and rebuild support for the concept of the two-state solution, a plan outlined in the 1993 Oslo Accords.

Several European nations have recently recognised the state of Palestine, including Ireland, Spain, and Norway.

JERUSALEM – Israel will not allow a planned meeting in the Palestinian administrative capital of Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, to go ahead, an Israeli official said on May 31, after media reported that Arab ministers planning to attend had been stopped from coming.

The delegation included ministers from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, Palestinian Authority officials said.

The ministers would require Israeli consent to travel to the West Bank from Jordan.

An Israeli official said the ministers intended to take part in “a provocative meeting” to discuss promoting the establishment of a Palestinian state.

“Such a state would undoubtedly become a terrorist state in the heart of the land of Israel,” the official said. “Israel will not cooperate with such moves aimed at harming it and its security.”

A Palestinian Authority official said that the issue of whether the meeting in Ramallah would be able to go ahead was under discussion.

The move comes ahead of an international conference, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, due to be held in New York on June 17 to 20 to discuss the issue of Palestinian statehood.

Israel has come under increasing pressure from the United Nations and European countries which favour a two-state solution to the Israeli Palestinian conflict, under which an independent Palestinian state would exist alongside Israel.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on May 30 that recognising a Palestinian state was not only a “moral duty but a political necessity”. REUTERS

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