MENA Strategic Bulletin – UNSC establishes framework for Palestinian leadership and governance; Saudi moves to close AI gap with UAE

Palestinian leadership and governance during the UNSCR 2803 transitional period

 On November 17, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2803 endorsing President Trump’s “comprehensive plan to end the Gaza conflict” and establishing a transitional governance structure for Gaza built around the Board of Peace (BoP). Under the resolution the BoP functions as Gaza’s interim administration until 31 December 2027, during which time the Palestinian Authority (PA) is expected to implement an extensive reform package drawn from the Trump Plan of 2020, the Saudi-French Proposal, and related commitments. If the PA meets these requirements and reconstruction advances sufficiently, the resolution outlines conditions under which a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood may emerge. A technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee responsible for the day-to-day administration of Gaza has already been established.

Regional and stakeholder impact

The adoption of the resolution has immediately reshaped the political landscape for Palestinians and regional actors. For the PA, the next two years are defined less by direct political authority in Gaza than by its administrative reform role and its relationship with the BoP and the technocratic committee. The period will be an important test of the PA’s ‘international legitimacy’ as well as its preparedness to re-enter Gaza politically and institutionally after 2027.

A significant political risk comes from within the Palestinian arena itself. Many Palestinian organisations, such as the BDS movement and NGO Addameer, and sections of civil society argue that UNSCR 2803 represents a return to externally imposed governance and a renewed form of neo-colonial oversight that extinguishes Palestinian agency. From this perspective, the PA’s engagement with the transitional governance structures is viewed as betraying the national cause and acquiescing to an externally imposed political framework, which aims to frustrate Palestinian statehood.

Regionally, Arab states including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Jordan play important roles in providing political cover, financial assistance and technical support for reforms. Their differing priorities and rivalries may complicate attempts to build a coherent reform strategy. The PA is therefore under pressure not only to remain aligned with its regional partners but also to manage domestic discontent expressed by parties and organisations, which believe that the transitional model will undermine Palestinian sovereignty and agency.

Israel remains a major determinant of outcomes. Likely persistent Israeli opposition to the PA returning to govern Gaza will be aimed at impeding meaningful reforms and preventing progress towards unifying West Bank and Gaza polity.

What’s next

The key question is whether the PA can use the transition period to demonstrate credible readiness to assume responsibility for Gaza. This includes undertaking reforms in governance, fiscal management, security and anti-corruption, all of which are central to the international assessment of its capability. The PA must also sustain positive engagement with the BoP in order to restore and nurture administrative connectivity between Gaza and the West Bank.

Looking ahead, political contestation is likely to intensify as the 2027 deadline approaches. The success of the transitional pathway, and the possibility of movement towards Palestinian statehood, will depend on whether the PA can overcome major obstacles including Israeli resistance, internal Palestinian fragmentation, and regional competition. The resolution opens a window for progress, but it looks very unlikely that it will lead the way to a two-state solution.

After MBS’s DC visit, Saudi moves to close the AI gap with the UAE

On November 18, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman held talks with President Trump in Washington DC, during his first White House visit since 2018. The meeting concluded with a new US–Saudi Memorandum of Understanding on Artificial Intelligence (AI), giving the Kingdom access to “world-leading American systems” and deepening cooperation between the two countries on advanced semiconductors, data-centre infrastructure and AI-related safeguards.

The agreement sits alongside newly expanded US export-licensing permissions that allow Saudi Arabia’s flagship AI venture, Humain, to access advanced AI chips from the US. The Saudi national champion is scaling from hundreds of megawatts (MW) toward gigawatt-class data-centre capacity with US technology partners.

Earlier this year, the UAE secured a US agreement to import up to 500,000 of Nvidia’s most advanced chips annually through at least 2027, underpinned by Emirati commitments to invest heavily in US tech infrastructure. That chip access underwrites the 5 GW UAE–US AI Campus under development in Abu Dhabi, backed by G42, OpenAI, Nvidia, Oracle, Cisco and SoftBank. Within the campus, the Stargate UAE cluster is moving towards its first 200 MW of capacity.

From a Saudi perspective, the White House AI pact is as much about narrowing an emerging Emirati lead as it is about opening a new frontier in the US–Saudi relationship.

Regional and stakeholder impact

Saudi Arabia is positioning its expanding gas base as the foundation for its AI growth. The Kingdom’s Jafurah field is now backed by a $11 billion midstream deal with a consortium led by Global Infrastructure Partners (a unit of BlackRock). It is estimated to hold around 229 trillion cubic feet of raw gas and is central to Aramco’s plan to raise gas output by 60% by 2030, with explicit reference to supplying “new growth industries such as AI data centres.” Riyadh is also building a global gas footprint overseas. For example, Aramco’s $500 million stake in LNG player MidOcean Energy gives it exposure to projects in Australia and, over time, a broader global LNG portfolio. New LNG offtake – and, in the case of Port Arthur, prospective equity – arrangements at US terminals such as Port Arthur and Rio Grande LNG tie Saudi capital directly into North American gas-to-power value chains. Saudi interest in developing Iraq’s Akkas gas field further extends Riyadh’s reach into a neighbouring producer.

The UAE is following a similar, but increasingly competitive, path. ADNOC has moved from a largely domestic gas player to an outward-facing investor. Through its investment arm XRG, it has acquired Galp’s 10% stake in Mozambique’s Area 4 Rovuma LNG development. This gives it access to more than 25 mtpa of existing and future LNG capacity. XRG – launched as an $80 billion platform focused on gas, chemicals and wider “energy solutions” – is also taking positions in upstream and midstream gas assets. In 2025, XRG completed the purchase of an 11.7% stake in the first phase of Rio Grande LNG in Texas. It also signed a heads of agreement to acquire a stake in Azerbaijan’s Southern Gas Corridor network to secure pipeline-linked supply into Europe.

These portfolios matter for AI because they underpin the cost and reliability of power for data centres – domestically, for Saudi projects around Jafurah and for the UAE’s Stargate campus, and internationally, for US and European facilities that will run on Gulf-backed LNG.

What’s next

In the near term, attention will focus on whether Riyadh can move from MoU to shovel-ready projects: land allocation, power-purchase structures around Jafurah gas and concrete partnerships between Humainand US hyperscalers will be watched closely. In parallel, Washington’s export-control decisions on chip sales to Saudi entities will determine how quickly any AI capacity can be operationalised – recent approvals are explicitly framed as conditional and reviewable.

For the UAE, the priority is execution at speed. The Nvidia chip approvals, Microsoft’s US licences to ship more than 60,000 advanced GPUs, and the first 200 MW of the Abu Dhabi AI campus all give Abu Dhabi a chance to solidify its first-mover status before Saudi capacity ramps up.

Over the medium term, the two countries are likely to continue on slightly different tracks. Saudi Arabia will lean on scaling up its gas reserves and on its widening overseas LNG portfolio to promote an “energy-at-cost” AI model, while the UAE will seek to monetise fast-track build-out, diversified gas exposure via XRG, and its deepening hardware relationships with US tech firms. The US, as regulator of chip flows and facilitator of LNG-linked deals, remains the key external actor shaping how far – and how fast – this Gulf AI competition runs.