Closed graphs have been characterized by Herzog et al. as the graphs whose binomial edge ideals have a quadratic Gröbner basis with respect to a diagonal term order. In this paper, we focus on a generalization of closed graphs, namely weakly-closed graphs (or co-comparability graphs). Build on some results about Knutson ideals of generic matrices, we characterize weakly closed graphs as the only graphs whose binomial edge ideals are Knutson ideals for a certain polynomial $f$. In doing so, we re-prove Matsuda's theorem about the F-purity of binomial edge ideals of weakly closed graphs in positive characteristic and we extend it to generalized binomial edge ideals. Furthermore, we give a characterization of weakly closed graphs in terms of the minimal primes of their binomial edge ideals and we characterize all minimal primes of Knutson ideals for this choice of $f$.