By Matt Murphy & Emily McGarvey
BBC News
Image source, Getty Images
Image caption, President Biden is scheduled to meet the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman
US President Joe Biden will meet Palestinian leaders in the occupied West Bank on Friday before he flies to a controversial summit in Saudi Arabia.
His meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is likely to be strained, analysts say, after ties hit a low under the Trump administration.
Later, Mr Biden will travel to Saudi Arabia to meet its de-facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Mr Biden will meet both the prince and his father, King Salman.
Two years ago, Mr Biden had pledged to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” over the 2018 murder in Turkey of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents.
The prince denies involvement, but US intelligence concluded he approved it.
Topics of discussion for the leaders will include energy supply, human rights, and security cooperation.
Mr Biden’s meeting with President Abbas in Bethlehem earlier on Friday will be the highest-level meeting between the US and the Palestinians since the Palestinians froze ties in a dispute over the closure of the Washington office of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) – the main representative body of the Palestinians – by the Trump administration in 2018.
The Palestinians want the US to do more to re-start peace talks with Israel, and to reopen the US consulate in Jerusalem, which served as a de facto embassy to the Palestinians before it was shut under President Trump in 2019.
Saudi Arabia is the world’s biggest oil producer, and the attempted reset of relations follows a spike in oil prices driven by Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The US is expected to push Saudi officials to commit to increasing production.
Late on Thursday, Saudi Arabia announced it would open its airspace to commercial Israeli flights – a decision welcomed by the US.
The move will see the kingdom’s airspace open to al
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