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War, Peace and Politics - The Royal Family and Palestine (Part III)

by Senior Analyst Talal Kapoor

Even before the outbreak of violence in Gaza in October, which derailed the latest diplomatic efforts to normalize relations with Israel, the Kingdom's long history of involvement with the Palestinian cause complicated ambitions to sell the Abraham Accords to a domestic audience. Since the royal family's claim to political legitimacy is tied to their religious credentials and, specifically, their custodianship of the two Holy Places (Makkah and Madinah), their service is not just to Saudi society - they are both leaders and servants of the global Muslim "ummah" (nation). Through the Kingdom's identification as a Muslim state, this universal aspect of the country's Islamic identity means that the Palestinian cause, and the status of Jerusalem, in particular, is an important component of national identity.

Faysal, taking the throne after his brother Saud, was determined, as a pious Muslim, to protect the sacred sites of Islam. Infuriated by the loss of East Jerusalem by Jordan in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Faysal tried to impress upon the Americans that their continued support for Israel would have negative consequences; later, the 1973 regional conflict, and US involvement, led to Faysal's embargo on the export of oil to the West. The "Oil Shock", and its cataclysmic effects, elevated the Kingdom from a poor backwater to the leading state in the region and a global economic player. From then on, the Palestinian cause became the main priority of Saudi diplomacy.

The second son of the founder Ibn Saud, Faysal had religious credentials second to none. His mother was a member of the Al al-Shaykh family, a direct descendant of the imam Muhammad bin Abd al-Wahhab, and the future king grew up in his maternal grandfather's house, where he had a religious upbringing. By the age of 12 he had traveled extensively across Europe, including trips to Britain and France where he acted as his father's unofficial envoy at the end of World War I. In March 1939 Faysal attended the London Conference (St. James Palace Conference) which attempted to negotiate an agreement between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, though it ended in failure, unable to resolve the matter of Jewish immigration. During the war, he met with President Roosevelt in Washington.

In 1947, Faysal was in New York for the UN vote on the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The Kingdom was strongly opposed to the proposal, but Faysal was privately assured by General Marshall, one of President Truman's top aides, that the US would vote against it. In the end, however, the Americans supported the partition, and Faysal, outraged, took it as a personal affront. He called on his father, the king, to break relations with the US, but he was overruled.

After succeeding his brother Saud, who was deposed in 1964, Faysal was on cordial, if somewhat frosty, terms with Washington. He continued to press the Americans on the issue of Palestinian statehood, assuring them that while "all of the Arab states desire the establishment of permanent peace throughout the region based upon right and justice", he was "likewise certain that there will be no final solution so long as Israel does not withdraw from all of the occupied territories, and so long as the Palestinian people are not given the right to return to their land and (enjoy) the right of self determination." In a letter to President Ford, he reiterated that it "remains our firm policy that no settlement is possible without taking into account the legitimate interests of the Palestinian people."

Still, correspondence from the time reveals that the Americans looked at the relationship mainly through the prism of regional Arab fundamentalism: Faysal aimed to prevent "at any cost" the radicalization of the Arab world, and favored a "settlement with Israel as the surest means of immunizing the Arabian peninsula against radical contamination", according to diplomatic cables.

Related articles: War, Peace and Politics - The Royal Family and Palestine (Part II)
War, Peace and Politics - The Royal Family and Palestine (Part I)
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