117The Free Officers coup witnessed the emergence of Nasser and Israel’s
decision to launch the Suez War in collaboration with Britain and France
catapulted him into being the first mass Arab leader. Nasser’s regional
domination, socialist ideas and regional ambitions unnerved the Saudis
and pushed them closer to the US and yet, Palestine remained a core Saudi
concern. If the June War marked the political decline of Nasser as well as
Egypt, the October War transformed the Saudi economic power.
Capitalizing on these advantages since the early 1970s Saudi Arabia has
emerged as the dominant player in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and
efforts towards its resolution.
Though reluctant to follow the footsteps of President Anwar Sadat and
his separate peace with Israel, Saudi Arabia has been less hostile towards
the Camp David Agreements than Iraq, Syria or the PLO were. Not join-
ing the rejectionist forces, on 7 August 1981 the then Crown Prince Fahd
unveiled a peace plan which offered a tacit but firm Arab recognition of
Israel (Tanner 1982 ; Razvi 1981 ; Dhanani 1982 ). Using the phraseology
of the UNSC Resolution 242 the plan declared: “All States in the region
should be able to live in peace in the region” (UN 1981 ). This was unac-
ceptable to countries like Iraq and Syria and forced Riyadh to water it
down. Stopping short of normalization with Israel, the Arab summit which
met in Fez in September 1982 declared inter alia, “The establishment by
the United Nations Security Council of guarantees of peace between all
States of the region, including the independent Palestinian State” (Arab
League 1982 ). Interestingly this proposal came within weeks after the
Israeli invasion of Lebanon and was overshadowed by the massacre of
Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps later that month.
The Saudi leadership played an important role in the convening of the
Madrid Middle East Peace Conference, cosponsored by the US and
USSR. It leveraged the liberation of Kuwait by the UN-backed and US-led
alliance to seek a political settlement to the prolonged Israeli-Palestinian
conflict (Dawisha 1983 ). Its support and endorsement were critical for the
international legitimacy for the Oslo process (Kostiner 2009 ). During the
crucial stages of the Camp David talks in September 2000, President Bill
Clinton reached out to Saudi Arabia to nudge Yasser Arafat (Clinton
2004 , 541).
A more notable Saudi role in the peace process had to wait until the
September 11 terror attacks in the US. The Saudi responsibility in this
problem began in the 1980s during the Afghan crisis when Riyadh
provided political, ideological, financial and military support to Afghan
PALESTINE FACTOR