Saudi Arabia may soon be joining the Abraham Accords
The US-Israel joint attack on Iran on 28 February could well see Saudi Arabia deciding to join the Abraham Accords sooner rather than later – as Saudi Arabia’s own territory – housing US military assets – is right now coming under attack from Iran’s missiles.
Saudi Arabia’s eventual entry into the Abraham Accords had been signalled at the inaugural meeting of President Trump’s Board of Peace on 19 February – which declared:
“Our goal by year three, Rafah fully rebuilt unemployment curbed and Gaza connected to the world through an Abrahamic gateway, linking it with Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and extending to India and Europe.”
The UAE is a foundation member of the Abraham Accords signed on 15 September 2020 – marking the first normalisation efforts between Israel and Arab states since Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994. The Accords also broke with the established regional consensus that normalisation would require resolving the Jewish-Arab conflict by creating a new state between Israel and Jordan (two-state solution).
Saudi Arabia had in March 2020 been the source of such a solution – authored by an advisor to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) – that trashed the two-state solution – calling instead for Palestinian self-determination to take place within a newly merged territorial entity comprising Jordan, Gaza and part of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) – to be called the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine.
Yet Saudi Arabia baulked at joining the Abraham Accords six months later.
The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution (HKOPS) was raised again on 8 June 2022 in the Saudi Government-controlled Al Arabiya News – and revised on 19 June 2022.
With no international or Arab League backing for HKOPS – Saudi Arabia returned once again to calling for a two-state solution.
MBS told Trump at the White House on 18 November 2025:
Any clear path to a two-state solution sought by MBS disappeared shortly after this meeting – when the latest UN plan – creating a Palestinian State in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem – was gutted – with Gaza’s removal from that solution following the Board of Peace decision to treat Gaza as a separate territorial unit.
Israel will not agree to the creation of any Palestinian state in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Any two-state solution is dead and buried.
Any solution to Palestinian self-determination will now involve Jordan and Israel allocating sovereignty of the West Bank between their two respective states.
Perhaps the newly-created Arab entity might even be called the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine.
Saudi Arabia will be free to join the Abraham Accords immediately. Hopefully, this opportunity won’t be missed.
Author’s note: The cartoon was published in August 2022 and drawn by Yaakov Kirschen aka “Dry Bones”- one of Israel’s foremost political and social commentators – who passed away on 14 April 2025 and whose cartoons graced the columns of Israeli and international media publications for decades.
David Singer is a Sydney lawyer and a foundation member of the International Analysts Network
