Saudi Arabia offers to renew aid to PA, potentially for support of Israel normalisation deal

Saudi Arabia has proposed the renewal of its financial aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA), with analysts speculating that it could be a tactic to woo the PA’s approval for a Saudi normalisation deal with Israel.

According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) yesterday, which cited anonymous Saudi officials, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, offered to renew aid to the PA when its President, Mahmoud Abbas, visited the Kingdom back in April. The aid was completely frozen in 2016 over allegations of PA corruption and graft.

Citing current Saudi officials and former Palestinian officials who were briefed on the talks, the WSJ reported that the Crown Prince offered to renew the funds on the condition that Abbas first manages to rein in Palestinian resistance groups in the West Bank and establish control of official PA territories beyond the Green Line.

Although bin Salman reportedly did not disclose the reasons for his consideration to renew the aid and did not reveal a normalisation deal with Israel behind it, he did guarantee Abbas that any potential deal with Israel would not harm Palestinian efforts for statehood.

The paper also quoted Saudi sources, however, as saying that the offer to renew aid was not directly linked to such a deal, but that the Kingdom does hold hopes that it would incentivise the PA to support any Saudi normalisation deal.

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According to the Saudi sources cited by the WSJ, Riyadh views the PA’s backing as an essential component to stabilise the potential consequences and backlash to a deal, providing an opportunity to legitimise it as it would have official Palestinian approval. It also reportedly aims to prevent or counter accusations that Saudi Arabia is disregarding and abandoning efforts for Palestinian statehood by pursuing normalisation with Israel.

Despite that reported strategy, there is speculation of whether it would even work in softening potential blowback from the Saudi populations and others in the wider Arab and Muslim world, as the PA’s legitimacy amongst Palestinians and others remains increasingly low. That is especially due to corruption allegations, cooperation and coordination with the Israeli occupation and the refusal to hold Palestinian elections for almost two decades.

In the accelerated US-brokered talks for normalisation between Riyadh and Tel Aviv throughout the past year, the Saudis have insisted that Palestinian rights and statehood be a primary condition for such a deal.

That insistence culminated in the US stressing to Israel this month that it will have to grant some rights and concessions to Palestinians if it seriously wants to establish a deal with the Gulf Kingdom. Despite that, extremists within the Israeli government have dismissed those warnings, with Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, stating on Monday that Israel will not make concessions to the Palestinians as part of normalisation efforts.

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