President Joe Biden continues to boast, without evidence, that he has strengthened relations with U.S. allies, but Saudi Arabia has different ideas, planning a meeting with the Palestinian terror group Hamas on Sunday.
The Times of Israel reported:
A senior delegation representing Palestinian terror group Hamas was set to visit Saudi Arabia on Sunday, according to multiple Arabic media reports, representing a major development as Israel’s hopes of forging official ties with Riyadh appear to dwindle further.
For many years, Saudi Arabia’s relationship with Hamas has been cold and tense, and the kingdom even arrested many people with ties to the jihadist group, which rules the Gaza Strip and openly seeks Israel’s destruction.
But following its landmark rapprochement with Iran, Riyadh appeared set to host a high-level delegation including Hamas politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh, his deputy Saleh al-Arouri, and the head of the group abroad, Khaled Mashaal, according to various Palestinian and Arabic-language media outlets, including Jordan’s Al Ghad and the London-based Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.
Hamas, an Islamist organization, is committed to Israel’s destruction. It carries out terror attacks against Israel, including suicide bombings and rocket attacks. It rules fellow Palestinians in the Gaza Strip with an iron fist.
The Saudis, among other Arab states, backed away from Hamas in recent years. Moreover, when President Donald Trump was in office. Saudi Arabia tacitly backed the Abraham Accords between Arab states and Israel.
But President Biden began downgrading relations with Saudi Arabia as soon as he took office, and the Saudis recently restored relations with the Iranian regime — under Chinese auspices. Iran backs Hamas openly.
The regional peace process that Trump began has been on hold since Biden took over. Biden also restored funding to the Palestinians — circumventing a U.S. law that prevents taxpayer funding of the Palestinian Authority while it continues to reward terrorism — and was promptly rewarded with a Hamas war against Israel in the spring of 2021. The Saudi-Iranian rapprochement is only the most recent example of a regression.
Biden visited Saudi Arabia last year to ask for increased oil production. But the Saudis rebuffed him — and also rejected the idea that allowing Israeli civilian airlines overflights was a step toward closer ties with Israel.
The Biden administration has attempted to isolate the Israeli government over a domestic political fight about judicial reforms, abandoning another ally in the face of rising threats from Iran, Hamas, and other enemies.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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