The Saudi-Israeli normalization process clearly accelerated this month. The PA advanced its demands to the U.S. and Saudi Arabia in exchange for not opposing the deal. Meanwhile in Gaza, organizers relaunched the return marches to protest the siege and blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip since 2007.
The U.S. and Israel have long pushed for a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, to sideline the creation of a Palestinian state through the Arab Peace Initiative. This month, the PA publicly engaged with the issue, in what seemed like a surrender to the prospect that normalization was inevitable. Unlike the process that led to the so-called Abraham Accords, where the PA rejected the process altogether, it now openly engaged and stipulated demands.
On 4 September, PA President Mahmoud Abbas discussed the issue of normalization with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The following day, PLO Secretary-General Hussein al-Sheikh, head of PA intelligence Majed Faraj, and President Abbas's foreign policy advisor Majdi Khaldi arrived in Riyadh for meetings with Saudi and U.S. officials, including National Security Council Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa Brett McGurk. Khaldi told the New York Times that the PA demanded the implementation of the Arab Peace Initiative. Axios has previously reported that the PA demands include changing the status of parts of Area C to Area B, for the U.S. to reopen its consulate to Palestinians in Jerusalem, for Saudi Arabia to open a consulate to the PA in Jerusalem, for Saudi Arabia to resume funding of the PA, and for Israel to agree to resume final status negotiations under a clear timeline. It has been reported that the Saudis would get either a mutual defense agreement with the U.S., help to develop a nuclear program, or both in exchange for normalizing relations with Israel. Additional meetings were held between Abbas, Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh, and Saudi officials on 26 September and 27 September in Ramallah.
U.S. and Israel officials were also meeting to discuss the issue. The most significant meeting took place on 20 September when President Joe Biden met with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly’s annual meeting in New York. It was the first time that the two had met since Netanyahu took office at the end of 2022. Israeli officials told the media that the meeting mainly concerned normalization and that Netanyahu assured Biden that there could be a Palestinian component to the deal. Axios would later report on 29 September that the two agreed that the component could be a provision that preserves the prospect of a two-state solution. On that same day, the perhaps most worrisome statement for Palestinians on the normalization issue happened during a Fox News interview where Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman said that normalization was moving close every day and that the Palestinian issue is important to his country. However, bin Salman said that the normalization deal would hopefully “ease the life of Palestinians and get Israel as a player in the Middle East,” signalling that Palestinian statehood was not necessarily part of the Saudi equation for a deal. In his speech to the General Assembly, Netanyahu displayed a map of the Middle East that did not include the West Bank or Gaza and said that normalization would enhance the chances of peace with Palestinians.
Following the statements made at the UN and in a further public sign of the PA’s resignation to the normalization prospects, PA UN ambassador Riyad Mansour said in an interview on 21 September that the PA was confident that the Saudis would protect Palestinian interests in a potential normalization deal. The PA’s response to the enhanced normalization talks was markedly different from the 24 September joint statement by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine which condemned the negotiations and called it “a clear betrayal of the blood of the martyrs and the Arab people.”
Concurrently with the closed-door negotiations and public statements, tangible steps toward normalization occurred in Saudi Arabia as Israeli officials visited the country for the first time publicly. A delegation of Israeli officials landed in Saudi Arabia on 10 September to attend the 45th session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee. (Saudi Arabia was required to allow the Israeli delegation entry as part of being awarded the conference.) Later, on 19 September, Israeli tourism minister Haim Katz visited Saudi Arabia as part of a UN World Tourism Organization conference and on 2 October Israeli communications minister Shlomo Karhi and member of the Knesset David Bitan also visited the country to attend a Universal Postal Union conference in Riyadh.
Another significant development this month was the renewal of the return marches in Gaza. The Higher National Commission of the Great March of Return and Breaking the Gaza Siege announced on 30 August that the return marches would restart to demand that Israel ease the siege. During the first protest on 1 September, Israeli forces injured a Palestinian with a tear-gas canister while others suffered tear-gas related injuries. The Israeli response to the second protest on 13 September was much more violent; Israeli forces shot and injured five protesters and injured others with tear gas. In the weeks that followed, the protests became a near daily occurrence with Israeli forces killing one Palestinian and injuring dozens of others with live ammunition, baton rounds, and tear gas. Additionally, Israeli forces conducted air strikes and fired artillery shells in several areas of Gaza, causing damage. Israel also closed the crossings in and out of Gaza on 19 September as collective punishment for the protest. The protests ended on 28 September after Israel reportedly promised to take steps to halt punitive measures against Palestinian prisoners, limit settler tours of the Haram al-Sharif compound, and provide some relief for residents of Gaza. Israel reopened the Beit Hanun crossing later that day.