AFP, Riyadh

US President Donald Trump’s plan to take over Gaza will imperil attempts to forge landmark ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel and fuel anti-American sentiment in the oil-rich kingdom, analysts said.

Trump’s proposal to redevelop Gaza and oust the more than two million Palestinians living in the territory prompted a global backlash and enraged the Arab world, making it difficult for the Saudis to consider normalisation.

“If this is going to be his policy, he shut the door on Saudi recognition of Israel,” James Dorsey, researcher at the Middle East Institute of the National University of Singapore, told AFP.

Recognition of Israel by Saudi Arabia is seen as a grand prize of Middle East diplomacy intended to calm chronic tensions in the region. But Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter and the Middle East’s largest economy, now faces the spectre of instability on its borders if neighbouring Jordan and Egypt suddenly house large numbers of Gaza exiles.

At the same time, Riyadh must maintain cordial relations with Washington, its long-time security guarantor and bulwark against key regional player Iran.

“When it comes to security, Saudi Arabia has nowhere to go but to Washington,” Dorsey said. “There’s nobody else. It’s not China. They’re not willing and they’re not able. And post-Ukraine, do you want to rely on Russia?”

The Saudis were engaged in tentative talks on normalisation via the United States until the outbreak of the Gaza offensive, when they paused the negotiations and hardened their position.

They reacted with unusual speed to Trump’s proposal, made during an appearance with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington.

About an hour after his comments, at around 4:00 am Saudi time, the foreign ministry posted a statement on X that “reaffirms its unequivocal rejection of... attempts to displace the Palestinian people from their land”.

In the same statement, the Saudis rejected Netanyahu’s comment that normalisation was “going to happen”, repeating their insistence there would be no ties without a Palestinian state. Trump’s plan carries real risks for Riyadh, which is throwing everything at an ambitious post-oil economic makeover that relies on stability to attract business and tourism.