As part of Washington’s persistent efforts to mediate a deal for normalisation between Riyadh and Tel Aviv, a senior advisor to US President Joe Biden is said to have visited Saudi Arabia.Brett McGurk, Biden’s senior Middle East adviser, reportedly arrived in Saudi Arabia on Saturday, according to the US news outlet Axios, to hold “talks with Saudi officials that will focus on the administration’s efforts to reach a normalisation agreement between the Israel and the kingdom as well as other issues.”McGurk was reportedly scheduled to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman to talk about the kingdom’s decision to normalise relations with Israel.The White House is attempting to push for a Saudi-Israeli agreement in the upcoming six to seven months prior to Biden’s presidential election campaigns, and McGurk’s visit is a part of those efforts.Less than two weeks have passed since US Secretary of State Tony Blinken visited Saudi Arabia and talked with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Saudi officials rejected the US diplomat’s most recent push for the normalisation agreement, and now the top advisor is travelling to the country.At a news conference with Blinken, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud stated that “any normalisation will have limited benefits” in the absence of a “pathway to peace for the Palestinian people.The US-mediated normalisation agreements between the Israeli government and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco in 2020 were cautiously welcomed by Saudi Arabia.Despite assertions that it is committed to the 2002 so-called Arab Peace Initiative, which places the establishment of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state within the borders of 1967 as a condition for normalising relations with Israel, the oil-rich kingdom itself has been anticipated to join the bandwagon since then. In November 2020, only hours before the first Israeli flight to the UAE was scheduled to depart, the Riyadh government authorised Israeli airlines to use its airspace.Arab-Israeli normalisation agreements have been roundly denounced by Palestinian officials, activists, and regular citizens as “a stab in the back of the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people.”