A senior diplomat from Riyadh declared that reforming the Israeli government — not the Palestinian Authority — is the key to achieving lasting peace in the Middle East.

Speaking onstage at the Doha Forum, Manal Radwan, a minister in Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry, pushed back against what she described as an international fixation on Palestinian governance reforms.

“The Palestinians have been reforming for the past 30 years,” Radwan said. She highlighted President Mahmoud Abbas’s recently announced reform package, a plan Western governments have insisted is necessary to revive the PA’s legitimacy. “President Abbas put forward a robust reform plan… because this is good for the Palestinians.”

Radwan said Saudi Arabia is helping the PA execute those reforms “on a daily basis.” But she argued that the biggest obstacle to regional stability lies elsewhere.

“What we need to really get a sustainable peace and security… and to implement President Trump’s peace plan, and to implement the Security Council resolutions, is a reformed Israeli government,” Radwan said.

She accused Israel’s current leadership of opposing a two-state solution, allowing officials to “continuously incite against Palestinians, against Arabs, against Muslims,” and making genuine diplomacy impossible.

“We don’t see that we have a partner for peace — not even a partner for a sustainable ceasefire,” she said. “That is the actual and important reform that we are hoping to see.”

Radwan’s comments came just hours after Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief and a senior Royal family member, blasted Israel as “the most destabilizing country in the region” due to its ongoing military campaigns in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, and Lebanon. The back-to-back criticisms underscore a deepening Saudi frustration with Israel’s conduct and political direction, even as Washington has intensified efforts to revive normalization talks between the two countries.

Her public defense of the PA also raised eyebrows. Behind closed doors, Riyadh has been one of the most forceful critics of Abbas, repeatedly pressing for sweeping reforms amid allegations of entrenched corruption and mismanagement.

Last month’s revelation that the PA’s then-finance minister had approved illicit payments to security prisoners – reviving the old “pay-for-slay” mechanism – infuriated Saudi officials, a U.S. official told The Times of Israel. Abbas subsequently fired the minister, a move that persuaded both Washington and Riyadh to stand down from more aggressive punitive steps.

Still, Radwan made clear that, from Saudi Arabia’s perspective, Palestinian failures are no longer the central issue.

“It’s the government of Israel that must change,” she said. “Without that, we cannot have peace.’

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)