On Tuesday this week, Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman, effective ruler of the oil-rich kingdom, was expected to arrive in Washington ahead of a White House meeting with US President Donald Trump and a subsequent official dinner.
Beyond the many bilateral files, especially military and civil nuclear cooperation, the meeting between Trump and Bin Salman is expected to address a range of regional issues, including the ceasefire in Gaza and its immediate future.
“The Saudis are key players, and their word is heard in Washington,” said a US-based Arab diplomat who asked for his name to be withheld.
With the ceasefire in Gaza seemingly at risk as a result of the failure to get Israel to fully abide by its commitments in the first phase that went into effect on 12 October, the Arab diplomat said that Bin Salman was expected to discuss with his American host ways to give the ceasefire a chance of sustainability.
“Trump wants the ceasefire to stay in place. The Saudis want the same, and it would be easy for the two sides to work out a plan for the coming months to avoid the collapse of the ceasefire,” the diplomat said.
He added that Trump also knows what he wants from Riyadh: more financial deals, including mega military purchases that some might require “understandings” with Israel for, and the “big prize” of Saudi-Israeli normalisation that “would open the doors to almost all-out Arab/Muslim-Israeli normalisation.”
The source added that Trump knows that he has to give something in return to Bin Salman, including the stabilisation of the Gaza ceasefire.
“The stabilisation of the ceasefire in Gaza is one of Bin Salman’s priorities because for Saudi public opinion, especially the younger generation who constitute the majority of the constituency of the Crown Prince, the Palestinian cause is something that they feel deeply about,” said another diplomat who has served in Saudi Arabia.
“The two-year Israeli genocidal war on Gaza rekindled the association with the Palestinian cause among young people across the Arab world and elsewhere across the world as well,” he added.
Bin Salman’s visit comes against the backdrop of the adoption of a UN Security Council resolution authorising the International Stabilisation Force (ISF) that is part of the ceasefire that was signed in Sharm El-Sheikh on 9 October, with Egyptian-Qatari-American mediation, based on the elements of the ceasefire plan proposed by Trump.
The resolution, proposed by the US, required negotiations on the mandate and operation of the ISF before it could be passed. As adopted on Monday by the Security Council, with the abstention of China and Russia, it satisfies two key demands of Egypt and other Arab and Muslim countries that have pledged contributions to the ISF.
The first is that it offers international authorisation for the presence of the ISF in the part of Gaza that the Israeli military has redeployed from. The second is that it does not task the ISF with the execution of the Israeli wish to disarm Hamas and other militant resistance groups in Gaza.
“The ISF will not be involved in neutralising the military capacity of Hamas or any other group. This is out of the question,” said a third Egyptian diplomat. He added that the mandate of the ISF “is clear – to bring stability to the Palestinians in Gaza.”
He said that this stability is about working to put up makeshift houses that will protect the Palestinians from the harsh experience of a winter with no roof over the heads, as the case has been for the past two years.
It would also make sure that there is the smooth entry and distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza, “which is really desperately needed,” he said, and it would secure the path towards the Rafah Crossing that Israel has so far declined to open despite the requirements of the first phase of the Trump plan.
This plan institutes a ceasefire and arranges the release of living Israeli hostages in Gaza, as well as the handover of most of the identified bodies of dead Israeli hostages and the release of Palestinians from Israeli prisons, with many of the latter having been forced by Israel to exit the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
“This is not the best resolution we had hoped for, but we worked very hard on it, and we consulted with the Americans, the Qataris, and the Turks, who were involved with us in pushing for the ceasefire in Gaza,” said an informed Egyptian source.
“However, we did not have the time for longer negotiations because we needed to start seeing things happen on the ground with regard to providing shelter and food to people who have started to go through increased suffering with the advent of winter,” he said.
He said that once the ISF is on the ground in Gaza things will start rolling. The objective, he added, is to provide decent shelter for everyone in the east of Gaza before winter starts in December. “It is already getting very cold, and we have all seen images of tents being inundated with rain in the past few days,” he said.
This week, the first storm of the season hit Gaza and flooded the camps and makeshift shelters of displaced people, adding to the misery that Palestinians in Gaza, most displaced inside their own territory, have been suffering from for the past two years.
According to a worker with an international organisation that operates in Gaza, “the miserable tents, occupied by people that have been suffering hunger and illness, are being soaked with water levels reaching close to 15 cm.”
“If the situation is not addressed soon, we can predict widespread infections that will hit at a time when Gaza is still very short on medicines and medical care,” he added.
Things, however, might still not be straightforward despite the passage of the UN resolution. This has been decried by the Palestinian factions, which have said that it allows the ISF to work on disarming Hamas.
This, a statement added, does not make the ISF a neutral body, and it “imposes an international guardianship mechanism on the Gaza Strip.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the adoption of the resolution and said that it “will lead to peace and prosperity because it insists upon full demilitarisation, disarmament, and the deradicalisation of Gaza.”
“True to President Trump’s vision,” this will “lead to the further integration of Israel and its neighbours as well as the expansion of the Abraham Accords,” Netanyahu said.
According to two UN sources familiar with the drafting of the resolution, there is room for interpretation of the text on matters of disarmament. The text of the resolution authorises the ISF to ensure a process of demilitarising Gaza, including by decommissioning weapons and destroying military infrastructure.
According to an Egyptian source, this “process” is not about forced disarmament but rather about a negotiated “neutralisation of Hamas’ “military capacity.”
“This is part of the deal, and we and [the other mediators of the ceasefire] have been talking to Hamas and the other Palestinian factions on the matter,” he added.
“Nobody ever said that the UNSC resolution would solve everything. It is a step – not perfect, but a step,” the source said. “We had to start somewhere, or else it would have been another horrible winter for the Palestinians in Gaza.”
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* A version of this article appears in print in the 20 November, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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