In the months before October 7, 2023, US officials and regional diplomats spoke about Saudi-Israeli normalization not as a question of whether but of when. The two countries had been engaged in secret working-level talks for years, with the Biden administration serving as the active broker of a framework that would include formal diplomatic recognition, a US-Saudi security treaty, and American assistance with a civilian nuclear program. Israeli officials described the deal as the most consequential normalization since the Egypt-Israel peace treaty of 1979.
Today, that agreement is not merely delayed — it appears further from completion than at any point in the past five years. Saudi Arabia has formally stated that normalization with Israel will not occur under the current government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, conditioning any future recognition on a credible pathway to Palestinian statehood, a ceasefire in Gaza, and Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territory. Sources close to the Saudi royal court have suggested that even a change of Israeli government might not be sufficient if Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank continues at its current pace.
What Changed
The October 7 attacks and the subsequent Gaza war fundamentally altered the domestic political calculations in Riyadh. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who had been willing to move toward normalization before the conflict, found himself constrained by the depth of Arab public opinion against Israeli military operations in Gaza. A normalization signed in the shadow of a war that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians would have carried severe reputational costs across the Arab and Muslim world that Saudi Arabia leads in matters of Islamic significance.
The normalization track was real and it was moving. What happened on October 7 was not just a humanitarian catastrophe — it was a reset of the entire regional political equation. Riyadh cannot be seen to reward what followed.
The Iran factor has also complicated the picture in ways that were not anticipated. Saudi Arabia and Iran signed a diplomatic reconciliation agreement in March 2023, brokered by China, which reduced Riyadh's incentive to align with Israel as a counterweight to Tehran. With direct Saudi-Iranian tensions reduced, the strategic logic for Riyadh to formalize ties with Israel — at significant political cost — has weakened.
What Would It Take
Saudi conditions for a resumed normalization track have become progressively more demanding. As of mid-2026, Riyadh requires a credible end to the Gaza conflict and a genuine commitment to Palestinian statehood — not a symbolic gesture but a defined political roadmap — before it will re-engage on formal normalization. A change of Israeli government, combined with a halt to new West Bank settlement construction, has been named by Saudi royal family sources as the minimum baseline for preliminary talks to resume.
Israel's current coalition is structurally unable to meet these conditions. The settlement expansion demanded by far-right coalition partners Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, who control significant leverage over the government's survival, runs directly counter to what Riyadh requires. Any government with the parliamentary arithmetic to negotiate Saudi normalization would by definition require a different coalition than the one currently in office.
The Abraham Accords Comparison
Saudi Arabia formally rejected any suggestion that it would join the Abraham Accords framework in May 2026, making explicit that the agreement model used to normalize relations between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan does not provide a sufficient basis for Riyadh's participation. Saudi officials argue that the Palestinian question must be central to any arrangement rather than treated as a separate track to be dealt with later, a position that reflects both genuine conviction and a calculation about what the kingdom can defend domestically and in the wider Muslim world.