{"id":9326,"date":"2022-07-16T13:52:53","date_gmt":"2022-07-16T13:52:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/?p=9326"},"modified":"2022-07-16T13:52:53","modified_gmt":"2022-07-16T13:52:53","slug":"biden-meets-mbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/world\/biden-meets-mbs\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden meets MBS"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>US President Joe Biden said he had confronted Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over attacks on dissidents during his visit to Saudi Arabia, a country he once vowed to make a &#8220;pariah&#8221; over its human rights abuses.<\/p>\n<p>Prince Mohammed drew global outrage for the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom s Istanbul consulate, an operation US intelligence services said he &#8220;approved&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Saudi officials deny Prince Mohammed s involvement and say Khashoggi s death resulted from a &#8220;rogue&#8221; operation.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What happened to Khashoggi was outrageous,&#8221; Biden said Friday night after a meeting with Prince Mohammed in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I just made it clear if anything occurs like that again they will get that response and much more.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But Biden did not specify what exactly he meant by &#8220;that response&#8221;, and earlier in the day he greeted Prince Mohammed, known as MBS, with a fist bump.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/PICTURES?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#PICTURES<\/a>: Leaders attending <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Jeddah?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Jeddah<\/a> security and development summit pose for family photo. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/SaudiUSpartnership?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#SaudiUSpartnership<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/q3ehazDPJE\">pic.twitter.com\/q3ehazDPJE<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Saudi Gazette (@Saudi_Gazette) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Saudi_Gazette\/status\/1548282663647096834?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">July 16, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>That moved prompted Khashoggi s fiancee to write to Biden on Twitter &#8212; in what she framed as an imagined response from Khashoggi himself &#8212; that &#8220;the blood of MBS s next victim is on your hands&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Read more:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/world\/biden-visits-israel-on-first-middle-east-tour-as-us-president.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Biden visits Israel on first Middle East tour as US president<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Despite his earlier condemnations of Saudi human rights abuses, Biden now appears ready to re-engage with the kingdom &#8212; a key strategic US ally, a major supplier of oil and an avid buyer of weapons.<\/p>\n<p>Washington wants the world s largest crude exporter to open the floodgates to bring down soaring oil prices, which threaten Democratic chances in November mid-term elections.<\/p>\n<p>Yet Biden also tried to tamp down expectations that this week s visit to the Middle East would yield immediate gains.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I m doing all I can to increase the supply for the United States of America,&#8221; he said, adding that concrete results would not be seen &#8220;for another couple weeks&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Israeli ties &#8211;<\/p>\n<p>US officials are also touting efforts to promote integration between Israel and Arab nations.<\/p>\n<p>Biden arrived in Saudi Arabia after a stop in Israel, becoming the first US leader to fly directly from Tel Aviv to an Arab nation that does not recognise Israel.<\/p>\n<p>Saudi Arabia has refused to join the US-brokered Abraham Accords under which Israel normalised ties with the kingdom s neighbours, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, in 2020.<\/p>\n<p>Riyadh has repeatedly said it would stick to the decades-old Arab League position of not establishing official ties with Israel until the conflict with the Palestinians is resolved.<\/p>\n<p>But it is showing signs of greater openness towards Israel, and announced Friday it was lifting overflight restrictions on aircraft travelling to and from Israel, a move Biden hailed as &#8220;historic&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Israeli caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid also praised the decision.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is the first official step in normalisation with Saudi Arabia,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>The White House announced Friday that peacekeepers including US soldiers would leave the strategic Red Sea island of Tiran, located near Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n<p>Analysts say the move could spur contacts between Israel and Saudi Arabia as they chart a possible path towards formal bilateral ties.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;\u00a0 Political horizon\u00a0 in Bethlehem &#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Jeddah marks the final stop on Biden s Middle East tour, following talks on Friday with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and meetings with Israeli officials a day earlier.<\/p>\n<p>With Palestinians banned by Israel from political activity in Jerusalem, the US president travelled to Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank to meet Abbas.<\/p>\n<p>Standing alongside him, Biden reiterated his commitment to a two-state solution to end the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.<\/p>\n<p>There &#8220;must be a political horizon that the Palestinian people can actually see&#8221;, Biden said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I know that the goal of the two states seems so far away,&#8221; Biden added.<\/p>\n<p>Abbas said he was &#8220;taking steps&#8221; to improve relations with Washington and aimed to see the US consulate to Palestinians in Jerusalem &#8212; which Trump closed &#8212; reopen.<\/p>\n<p>But Biden has made clear he had no plans to reverse Trump s controversial move to recognise Jerusalem as Israel s capital, which infuriated Palestinians who see its eastern sector as the seat of their future state.<\/p>\n<p>With Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations moribund since 2014, the US delegation has been focusing on economic measures.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;\u00a0 Justice for Shireen\u00a0 &#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Biden was greeted in Bethlehem with a billboard reading &#8220;Justice for Shireen&#8221;, referring to Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian-American journalist shot dead in May while covering an Israeli army raid in the West Bank.<\/p>\n<p>Her family requested to meet Biden during his visit, but his administration has instead invited them to Washington.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think if President Biden (can) find an hour and a half to go and attend a sport activity, he should have respected the family and given them 10 minutes to listen to them,&#8221; said Samer Sinijlawi, chairman of a Palestinian nonprofit, the Jerusalem Development Fund, after Biden on Thursday attended a ceremony for Jewish athletes.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking alongside Abbas, Biden said the US &#8220;will continue to insist on a full and transparent accounting&#8221; of Abu Akleh s death.<\/p>\n<p>Washington earlier this month concluded she was likely shot from an Israeli military position, but that there was no evidence of intent to kill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US President Joe Biden said he had confronted Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over attacks on dissidents during his visit to Saudi Arabia, a country he once vowed to make a &#8220;pariah&#8221; over its human rights abuses. Prince Mohammed drew global outrage for the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the kingdom s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":9328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,3],"tags":[427,4472],"class_list":["post-9326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-world","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-us-president-joe-biden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}