The United States is close to signing a landmark defense treaty with Saudi Arabia that would provide the Gulf nation with U.S. defense guarantees in exchange for normalizing ties with Israel, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The diplomatic plan is part of the Biden administration’s efforts to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire with Hamas in the Gaza war. A Biden administration would provide security guarantees to Saudi Arabia and open the door to normalizing ties between Jerusalem and Riyadh, a long-standing goal of Netanyahu. according to To the journal.
But the U.S. deal is conditional on Israel reaching a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and establishing a path to a Palestinian state, a plan opposed by the majority of Israelis, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The treaty would mark a departure from Biden’s tough stance during the campaign to hold Saudi Arabia’s leaders accountable for the alleged killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
“Khashoggi was in fact murdered and his body dismembered, I believe on the orders of the crown prince,” Biden said during a debate in 2020. “Let me be very clear: we were not actually going to sell them more weapons. We were actually going to make them pay a price and we were actually going to make them the pariah that they were,” Biden said forcefully.
WATCH: Biden talks about what he vowed to do during the 2020 election campaign to punish Saudi Arabia and the US-Saudi coalition for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and the slaughter of children in Yemen if elected president. pic.twitter.com/CiP4qqRIBP
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 14, 2022
The strategic alliance agreement would be the first security pact the United States has signed since it provided similar guarantees to Japan in 1960. Officials told The Wall Street Journal that the pact is “loosely modeled” on the mutual defense pact between the United States and Japan. (RELATED: ‘We can make history together’: Video captures historic moment between Israel and Saudi Arabia)
A two-thirds majority in the Senate would be required to guarantee security.
The treaty has been in negotiation for at least a month, with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan leading a coalition negotiating it with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in May, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The treaty is subject to congressional approval, which is unlikely without a ceasefire in Gaza, The Wall Street Journal reported. The US is also drafting a parallel Defense Cooperation Agreement to facilitate arms sales and allow for greater cooperation in joint efforts to combat threats from common enemies such as Iran.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the cooperation agreement could be implemented by presidential order.
Netanyahu has long sought to strengthen ties and cooperation with Saudi Arabia, but he is adamantly opposed to a two-state solution for Palestine, a view increasingly shared by his supporters.
According to the paper, 74 percent of Israel’s Jewish population opposes the idea of a Palestinian state, even as a condition of a treaty with Saudi Arabia.
