Israeli actions in Palestinian territory and Israeli government make agreement impossible.

It is a grand and progressive vision worthy of the utmost efforts. But it is receding in plain sight due to an upsurge of Palestinian and Jewish settler violence in the West Bank and the expansion of Israel’s settlements there.

These developments greatly undermine the chances of a two-state solution, which is one of Saudi Arabia’s unwavering conditions for a historic rapprochement with Israel.

That this is happening is hardly surprising.

Netanyahu, a rightist from the Revisionist school of Zionism, presides over the most reactionary government in Israeli history. He and his ministers are in the process of expanding settlements, entrenching Israel’s control of the West Bank, and smothering the possibility of Palestinian statehood once and for all. At best, they would grant the Palestinians a limited form of autonomy.

Netanyahu is acutely aware that he needs to make major concessions to the Saudis, but given the hard right nature of his coalition government, he cannot move forward. However, he should remember that the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain agreed to normalize relations with Israel only after Netanyahu called off his plan to annex the Jordan Valley.

In the face of this unforgiving political landscape, the United States, a supporter of a two-state solution, has launched a concerted diplomatic campaign to broker a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Yet, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has warned, the ongoing troubles in the West Bank have made the attainment of normalization far more problematic and difficult.

In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City on June 28, Blinken said, “We’ve told our friends and allies in Israel that if there’s a fire burning in their backyard, it’s going to be a lot tougher, if not impossible, to actually both deepen the existing (Abraham Accords) agreements, as well as to expand them to include potentially Saudi Arabia.”