An online forum held on Feb. 11 by the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, celebrating the 80 years of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, featured the grandsons of the initiators of that relationship, Delano Roosevelt and HRH Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud (commonly known as Turki Al-Faisal.) In both his keynote and in the subsequent discussion, Prince Turki describedPrince Turki described some of the conversations his grandfather King Abdulaziz Al Saud, the founder (1932) of Saudi Arabia, had had with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, underlining the assurances given that there would never be any expropriation of Arab lands. This was at a time when there were clear attempts to establish a Jewish presence in Palestine. Roosevelt said that he would not assist in the forming of a new state, and would confer with both the Jews and the Arabs with regard to the development of the region. In his address to Congress, Roosevelt said that he had learned more about the region through his conversations with King Abdulaziz than from any other source, Turki said.
That changed under Truman, Prince Turki observed, but Truman, at the same time, had made assurances that he was opposed to aggression of any kind, and that there would be no aggression against the Arab population by a Jewish state. His assurance was quickly annulled by Israeli actions. Later, Prince Turki expressed concernPrince Turki expressed concern that President Trump had not first consulted with the Arab countries about his proposal for developing Gaza: “I wish Mr. Trump had coordinated with his friends in our part of the world how he wants to go about that…. He could have coordinated and would have perhaps received suggestions that, together, as Dr. Sager said, when Europe was destroyed after the Second World War, the United States came up with the Marshall Plan and coordinated with the European leadership on how to rebuild, in all of Europe, without driving out the populations, there. So, I think it’s a doable matter for the Palestinians to remain in Gaza and the West Bank and be developed and reconstructed out of the devastations that they have suffered at the hands of the Israeli army and the Netanyahu government….”
During the Q&A, one of the two questions read came from EIR on the Oasis Plan. “Given Trump’s vision of rebuilding Gaza and removing Palestinians from the area, would it not be important for the Arab countries and other countries to propose a program for development of the region for and with the Palestinians in Gaza? After the Oslo agreements, there was a proposal for water and electricity development, including new canals, called the Oasis Program. This, along with the proposal for a Mideast Development Bank, died on the vine, and probably helped kill the Oslo Accords.”
Prince Turki, who had already commented on the issue, was a bit defensive here, suggesting that the Saudis had submitted many proposals for the region as far back as 1948. He noted, in particular, the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, which called for ending hostilities. “Israel never responded,” he said.
