Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will not agree to forge formal relations with Israel before Palestinians get a state, a columnist who is close to the royal family wrote Monday.
The message came from Dr. Nawaf Obaid, a former adviser to the Saudi government, in an article for the Palestinian al-Quds newspaper.
The ex-official added that Israel's current policy toward Palestinians was not conducive for Saudi Arabia to seek normalization.
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Obaid said that the crown prince had worked on the Palestinian issue and had been in touch with both sides in the conflict.
"Most of the people in Saudi Arabia still believe that, as the late King Faisal said, the kingdom should be the last Arab and Muslim country to recognize Israel," he wrote. "Some extremists would be outraged if Israel was recognized because they would view this as a betrayal of the values of Islam," he continued. He also conceded that "the door to normalization with Israel has been pened and cannot be fully shut, although it is contingent on Palestinian independence."
He also noted that the Saudi public was still far from supporting the idea of Israeli-Saudi normalization.
While Israel recently normalized ties with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan in the Abraham Accords under the auspices of the Trump administration, Saudi Arabia welcomed the deals but did not follow suit.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has recently said that, if he wins the March 23 parliamentary elections and swears in a new government, he would secure direct flights between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
However, earlier reports suggested that an Israeli-Saudi normalization was unlikely under King Salman bin Abdulaziz.
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i24NEWS contributed to this report.
