According to The Atlantic, Blinken enquired whether the Saudis could tolerate Israel periodically re-entering the territory to strike the besieged Gaza Strip.
“They can come back in six months, a year, but not on the back end of my signing something like this,” Mohammed bin Salman responded.
“Seventy percent of my population is younger than me,” the crown prince explained to Blinken.
“For most of them, they never really knew much about the Palestinian issue. And so they’re being introduced to it for the first time through this conflict. It’s a huge problem. Do I care personally about the Palestinian issue? I don’t, but my people do, so I need to make sure this is meaningful.”
All else aside, if our leaders were more like the crown prince, we wouldn’t be sending more bombs to the bombers.
“I don’t care personally, but my people do, so I’m doing what they ask.” Meanwhile, national polling suggests a majority of Americans want to stop arming Israel while they’re committing war crimes, but the overwhelming majority of our political leaders give full-throated support.
And America is, ostensibly, the democracy.