Training for recruits in Israel’s elite Sayeret Matkal army unit—which counts Israel’s current prime minister among its veterans—includes a series of long-range, solo navigation exercises. But it’s been 50 years since Benjamin Netanyahu retired from active duty in that storied IDF reconnaissance unit, and his compass must be malfunctioning. As he plots a course toward formalizing ties between his country and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Netanyahu appears lost hopelessly in his own backyard. While he dreams of regional peace, his ruling coalition is gearing up to undermine his plans.

A Saudi-Israeli deal is the grand prize of contemporary Middle East diplomacy. Biden administration officials have been shuttling doggedly between Riyadh and Jerusalem to negotiate a bargain—in which the United States would play an integral role—that would bring obvious benefits to all three nations.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would stand to pocket items on his “shopping list”—which includes a security pact with the United States and possession of a civilian nuclear capacity—and the incidental rehabilitation of his image, which took a major hit after the U.S. intelligence community determined that he “approved an operation” that resulted in the brutal killing of a Washington Post columnist in 2018.

For Netanyahu, an agreement with Saudi Arabia would be a tipping point that helps unlock the potential of economic and diplomatic horizons from Africa to Asia that were previously out of Israel’s reach. He could also burnish his credentials as a statesman at a time when attention is focused instead on his government’s controversial plans for Israel’s judiciary.

U.S. President Joe Biden would garner an important foreign policy win, catalyzing further integration in that region and, perhaps more critically, scoring a victory for Pax Americana against expanding Chinese influence in the Arabian Peninsula. Enlisting OPEC to offset skyrocketing energy prices would be an additional bonus. (He could apply the additional ballast to his struggling reelection campaign.)

Success will require each of the parties to do their own heavy lifting. Biden will have to bestow his ultimate blessing upon the very Saudi regime to which he pledged, during the presidential debates in 2019, not to “sell more weapons to them,” but rather to “make them pay the price and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are.” The crown prince will be granting bona fide recognition to Israel, a country which doesn’t even appear by name on the Kingdom’s official maps. Israel will not get a free lunch.

The Biden administration has made it clear that Israel will be expected to contribute “significant deliverables to the Palestinians” in exchange for normalized relations with Saudi Arabia. The Saudis, whose then-crown prince and later king, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, authored the original Saudi initiative for peace with Israel in 2002, are not about to forfeit their preeminence on the Palestinian issue to the United Arab Emirates, which styled its signing of the Abraham Accords as a quid pro quo for Israel consenting to halt “further Israeli annexation of Palestinian territories.” Concessions to the Palestinians, who have long demanded independent statehood, will be equally pivotal for the sake of harnessing support among a wary Democratic caucus for any acquiescence to Saudi demands.

The problem—which Riyadh has just grasped—is that Netanyahu has no latitude to satisfy the minimum requirements for concessions to the Palestinians.

This latter message was certainly reinforced when Biden met Netanyahu on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Sept. 20. Biden, per the White House readout of that encounter, “called on all parties to fulfill their commitments made during meetings held earlier this year in Aqaba, Jordan, and Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to include refraining from further unilateral measures.”

(The original Aqaba Communique from Feb. 26, 2023 stipulated “an Israeli commitment to stop discussion of any new settlement units for 4 months and to stop authorization of any outposts for 6 months.” A defiant Netanyahu responded swiftly that “building and authorization in Judea and Samaria will continue according to the original planning and building schedule, with no change.”)

The problem—with which Riyadh has just come to terms evidently—is that Netanyahu has no latitude to satisfy the minimum requirements for discernible movement vis-à-vis the Palestinians. Notwithstanding his insistence that “the mainstream policies [of the government] are decided by me,” the facts suggest otherwise.

Last week, Bezalel Smotrich, Netanyahu’s hardline finance minister whose Religious Zionism Party holds seven of the seats in Netanyahu’s narrow 64-56 Knesset majority, reprised his refrain that rapprochement with Saudi Arabia does “not involve the Arabs of Judea and Samaria who have nothing to do with the process.” (That’s his way of saying that the fate of Palestinians in the West Bank lies outside the scope of these conversations with Saudi Arabia and the United States.).

Smotrich has blocked the fulfillment of multiple Israeli commitments to ease economic restrictions on the Palestinian Authority. His outcry, joined by other members of the coalition, against an ostensible transfer of weapons to Palestinian forces—which Netanyahu branded immediately as fake news, and pinned on a decision of then-Defense Minister Benny Gantz in 2022—sent the prime minister scrambling to order a review of “all the decisions made by the previous government regarding the Palestinian Authority, with the aim of tightening supervision.” Smotrich has wielded his concurrent appointment as a minister in Israel’s Ministry of Defense to initiate a settlement boom and preclude any possibility of tangible compromise with the Palestinians.

No magical sequencing that postpones compromises with the Palestinians can extract Netanyahu from this ideological impasse. The contours of what, according to Israeli media, Saudi Arabia is proposing for the Palestinians—an interim arrangement that involves elements such as a cessation halt of settlement construction, the transfer of certain areas under full Israeli control (Area C) to Palestinian jurisdiction (Area A), acknowledgement of a Palestinian right to establish a capital in East Jerusalem and the reopening of a separate U.S. consulate to the Palestinians in that city—are a nonstarter for Smotrich’s constituency. From Smotrich’s perspective, Israeli concessions need to be confined exclusively to the economic realm, without ceding an inch of territory.

Netanyahu’s present cabinet and an historic breakthrough with Saudi Arabia are simply incapable of coexisting.

Netanyahu’s present cabinet and an historic breakthrough with Saudi Arabia are simply incapable of coexisting. Smotrich, who banished the Israeli right to opposition in 2021, when he refused to countenance the participation of Mansour Abbas’ United Arab List in a Netanyahu coalition—and drove Abbas into the waiting arms of Netanyahu nemeses Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid—has already demonstrated that the prospect of marching into the political wilderness does not frighten him.

And with no apparent volunteers to replace Smotrich and his allies around the campfire, Netanyahu—unless he’s inclined to attempt a legacy play that rests upon the outside backing of the opposition and a rapid collapse of his rule—is unlikely to reach his destination anytime soon.

“Every day we get closer” to normalization with Israel, Mohammed bin Salman told Fox News in an interview that was broadcast after the Netanyahu-Biden meeting. The positive trajectory of Saudi-Israeli relations is arguably inevitable, but an actual agreement will likely remain elusive for the foreseeable future—and might not even happen on Netanyahu’s watch.