Israel can convince the Americans that a unified Sunni Arab front against the Iranian threat is of greater urgency than continued cooperation with the US on efforts to transform the region into a democratic paradise.
President Isaac Herzog recently said his wish would be to travel to Riyadh in the future. While certainly understandable, that future is not right around the corner. Herzog himself said in an interview with Israel Hayom that a number of external conditions would need to exist before he could take off for Saudi Arabia. Contrary to popular opinion, though, Israel is also capable of shortening this timeframe.
Saudi Arabia is not an official partner to the Abraham Accords, but these normalization agreements would not have been signed without Riyadh’s encouragement and approval. Israeli planes cross Saudi airspace on their way to the United Arab Emirates, senior Saudi officials no longer boycott their Israeli counterparts at international meetings, and the 36-year-old Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman recently said in an interview with The Atlantic that “We do not view Israel as an enemy, but rather as a potential ally in the many interests that we can pursue together ….”
Riyadh is already connected to Jerusalem in many ways, especially as far as security is concerned, but a majority of these ties are covert.
Herzog, like the crown prince, has also spoken of “issues [that] must be resolved before” relations can go public.
There are three main obstacles to normalization, the first of which is opposition within the kingdom to the crown prince’s support for normalization. This opposition comes not only from King Salman, who while frail is known to be an adamant opponent of the move, but also from princes and other royal family members who believe the time is not yet right for peace with Israel.
The second factor is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As the guardian of the Muslim holy sites, Saudi Arabia is far more sensitive to the religious component and the fact that the Temple Mount is under Israeli control than a country like the UAE. It is no coincidence that the riots at the holy site triggered a sharp Saudi condemnation of the “Israeli occupation.”
True, it was the Saudis who proposed peace 20 years ago, including between the Arab states and Israel, in return for Israel’s withdrawal from Judea and Samaria and the establishment of a Palestinian state. But Riyadh had not made any significant contribution to a resolution of the conflict nor pressured the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state since.
The Middle East has since changed, and Israel now has the ability to bring Saudi Arabia closer and extract a more balanced position from Riyadh, for example, by allowing for the possibility of Saudi involvement in determining the Muslim prayer schedule on the Temple Mount. After all, this is a holy place for all Muslims and not just Palestinians and Jordanians.
The third factor stalling normalization is the lackluster relationship between Riyadh and the US administration, which deteriorated to new lows following the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey at the hands of bin Salman’s emissaries.
Yet the Middle East has rules of its own, and here, interests take precedence over morality. While US President Joe Biden blames bin Salman for a journalist’s assassination, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country’s economy is collapsing, rushes to Saudi Arabia to make peace with the crown prince. In fact, he has even agreed to allow the suspects’ trial to be held in Riyadh instead of Ankara.
Israel, which is experienced in making peace with tyrants over the heads of their people, can convince the Americans that a unified position from the main Sunni Arab states in the face of the Iranian threat is of greater urgency than continued cooperation with the US over the effort to transform the region into a democratic paradise at this time.
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