Saudis respond to Netanyahu proposal to create Palestinian state in Saudi Arabia

”The Saudis can create a Palestinian state in Saudi Arabia; they have plenty of land over there,” said Netanyahu.

By World Israel News Staff

The Saudi government rebuffed suggestions last week that it use its own territory to facilitate the establishment of a Palestinian state.

On Sunday, the Saudi Foreign Ministry issued a page-long statement rejecting comments by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made last week during an interview with Israel’s Channel 14, during which the Israeli leader said, possibly intended as a joke, that Saudi Arabia itself furnish the land for a future Palestinian state.

”The Saudis can create a Palestinian state in Saudi Arabia; they have plenty of land over there,” Netanyahu said, in response to the oil-rich Sunni kingdom’s recent statements linking normalization of ties with Israel to Palestinian statehood.

Netanyahu went on to reiterate his opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria.

In response, Riyadh issued a “categorical rejection” of “what Benjamin Netanyahu stated regarding the displacement of the Palestinian people from their land.”

The Saudi foreign ministry also condemned what it called the “continuous crimes committed by the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian brothers in Gaza, including the ethnic cleansing they are subjected to.”

“The Kingdom affirms that the Palestinian people have a right to their land, and they are not intruders or immigrants to it who can be expelled whenever the brutal Israeli occupation wishes.”

The statement echoed Saudi Arabia’s insistence that any comprehensive deal with Israel include Jerusalem’s acceptance of Palestinian statehood. “The Kingdom also asserts that lasting peace will not be achieved except…through the two state solution.”

Last week, Riyadh rejected claims by President Donald Trump on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia had privately dropped its insistence that normalization with Israel be accompanied by the establishment of a Palestinian state.

The Saudis also publicly condemned Trump’s Gaza plan, under which the U.S. would facilitate the mass resettlement of the Strip’s entire population in third-party countries.