Saudi Arabia calls Israel barring Arab ministers West Bank trip ‘extremism'
Saudi Arabia has accused Israel of 'extremism and rejection of peace' after it blocked a planned visit by Arab foreign ministers to the occupied West Bank.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud made the remarks during a joint news conference in Jordan's capital, Amman, on Sunday with his counterparts from Jordan, Egypt, and Bahrain.
'Israel's refusal of the committee's visit to the West Bank embodies and confirms its extremism and refusal of any serious attempts for [a] peaceful pathway … It strengthens our will to double our diplomatic efforts within the international community to face this arrogance,' Prince Faisal said.
His comments followed Israel's decision to block the Arab delegation from reaching Ramallah, where they were set to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The ministers from Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had planned the visit as part of efforts to support Palestinian diplomacy amid Israel's ongoing war on Gaza.Israel controls the airspace and borders of the West Bank, and on Friday announced it would not grant permission for the visit.
'The Palestinian Authority – which to this day refuses to condemn the October 7 massacre – intended to host in Ramallah a provocative meeting of foreign ministers from Arab countries to discuss the promotion of the establishment of a Palestinian state,' an Israeli official had said, adding that Israel will 'not cooperate' with the visit.
Prince Faisal's trip to the West Bank would have marked the first such visit by a top Saudi official in recent memory.
Jordan's Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said blocking the trip was another example of how Israel was 'killing any chance of a just and comprehensive' Arab-Israeli settlement.
An international conference, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, is due to be held in New York from June 17 to 20 to discuss the issue of Palestinian statehood.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said the conference would cover security arrangements after a ceasefire in Gaza and reconstruction plans to ensure Palestinians would remain on their land and foil any Israeli plans to evict them.
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.
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And it seemed like it was never going to end, but it did. It seemed like the anarchist violence of the early 20th century — it lasted for a couple of decades, killed the U.S. president — it seemed that was never going to end either, but it does. These things burn themselves out. I guess the best way of putting it is that human beings seek novelty, and after a while, political violence gets to be old hat and uncool. What's an example of cathartic violence from history? Well, I think that the political violence of the late 1960s was cathartic. You had the assassination of the U.S. president, of Martin Luther King, of Bobby Kennedy. And then it stopped. People shied away from political violence. Exactly why it stopped, I don't know, but it did. It wasn't just assassinations, it was also street violence. And then things calmed down. If I had to come up with a reason why, it's that people get bored. Initially, politically posturing and making violent threats gets you admiration and psychological support from other people, but eventually it gets old, and people stop doing it. Do you see the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol or last year's attempted assassination of Donald Trump as having contributed to the political violence we're seeing today? Is all of this building up in our society? Yeah. And unfortunately, a big part of that is institutional. I mean, what does it say when you commit violent crimes en masse and then the president of the United States pardons you? It basically tells people, 'Yeah, you've got a free pass the next time.' In that previous interview, you suggested that the Jan. 6 riot wasn't a turning point for political violence in our nation, because it didn't end up worse — there wasn't a 'cathartic cataclysm' with the killing of a politician, for instance. Is there any way to subdue violence without having to embrace that kind of extreme ending? How do we lower the temperature in America? If you're lucky, it burns itself out without a cataclysmic event. And I stand by what I said, which is that, had they actually killed Mike Pence, I think that would have ended it right there.
