FDR meets with Saudi king, Feb. 14, 1945
On this day in 1945, with World War II soon to draw to an end, President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with King Abdulaziz ibn Abdul Rahman Al Saud in Egypt. They met in the Great Bitter Lake along the Suez Canal aboard the USS Quincy, the heavy cruiser that had carried FDR across the Atlantic and would then return to America.
The Quincy was surrounded by other cruisers and destroyers with an air cap overhead of fighter planes. (German U- boat submarines were a menace.) Ibn Saud, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, had come from Jidda on an American destroyer, the USS Murphy, with an entourage of bodyguards, cooks and slaves, plus an astrologer.
(The king reluctantly agreed to leave his wives behind in Jidda after being told that their privacy could not be assured in the tight-fitting space of a destroyer. It was the king’s first trip outside the Arabian Peninsula aside from a brief visit to Basra in Iraq and his first time to travel by sea.)
Ibn Saud told the president that the two of them shared much in common, including infirmity. The king could walk only with difficulty, due to his age (70) and many war wounds. FDR — suffering from high blood pressure and with only a few more months to live — gave Ibn Saud one of his wheelchairs. It was to become a prized possession at the royal palace, even though the king was too large to fit comfortably in the chair.
After lunch, they went back on deck for a four-hour meeting. Having established a personal rapport and agreeing that the United States and Saudi Arabia should remain allies in the postwar world, Roosevelt raised another issue: the fate of Europe’s Holocaust survivors and their desire for a Jewish homeland in Palestine — one they were willing to share with their Arab neighbors.
The king was firm in his reply. “The Jews should return to live in the lands from which they were driven,” he said. Roosevelt responded that few Holocaust survivors would want to live in Germany.
Unpersuaded, the king said: “Make the enemy and the oppressor pay; that is how we Arabs wage war. Amends should be made by the criminal, not by the innocent bystander. What injury have the Arabs done to the Jews of Europe? It is the Christian Germans who stole their homes and lives. Let the Germans pay.” The king suggested the Rhineland as a suitable destination for surviving Jewry.
Roosevelt tried another tack. The Arabs were numerous and their lands extensive; the Jews, by contrast, were few. The king looked FDR in the eye and uttered one word: “La” (“No”).
Despite this setback, the meeting marked the start of a security relationship between the two nations that continues to this day. President Donald Trump has sought to play down recent strains in their bilateral dealings.
SOURCE: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/chapter-one_-kings-and-presidents.pdf