Saudi Arabia inches toward peace with Israel

Riyadh’s public statements on normalization are inconsistent with its private efforts

After the signing of the Israeli-UAE peace agreement in 2020, many believed Saudi Arabia would be the next Arab country to normalize relations with Israel. Indeed, behind closed doors, the Saudi royals have long been eager to communicate with the Israelis.

But the Saudi foreign minister said Riyadh would not sign a peace deal with Israel until a Palestinian state is established. The Saudi leadership is worried that normalizing ties would hurt its image in a country where the public remains resistant to reconciliation.

Unlike Arab rulers who, for the most part, wanted to open to Israel decades ago, the Arab public has been reluctant to interact with Israeli Jews, let alone recognize Israel’s right to exist. Thus, Arab leaders have consistently denied having contact with their Israeli counterparts, despite privately forging ties on economic, security and other affairs.

State of Denial

Arab leaders have for decades collaborated with the Israelis. In the early 20th century, the Hashemites in Hejaz, who cooperated with the British Empire during World War I and aspired to create an Arab kingdom in West Asia, knew that the British had a different plan for Palestine and still declared the Arab revolt against the Ottomans in 1916. In talks about an Arab rebellion, British diplomat Henry McMahon said he didn’t promise anything to the king of Hejaz beyond freeing Arabs from the Turks. McMahon said the king understood the British position and went along with it.

In 1938, the head of the nonprofit Jewish Agency, David Ben-Gurion, met with the Saudi ambassador to London to try to win Saudi founder Ibn Saud’s approval for establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. A year later, Ibn Saud’s adviser, John Philby, proposed to the chairman of the World Zionist Organization the establishment of a Jewish state in coastal Palestine in exchange for 20 million British pounds.

Ibn Saud denied his involvement in the potential deal after Philby leaked it to the media. But he was willing to go along with the plan even since World War I because he needed British assistance against the Ottomans and British weapons to seize Hejaz in the west, Asir in the south, and Hail in the north. He was also concerned about the expanding influence of Jordanian ruler Prince Abdullah bin Hussein, whom he feared would dominate all of Palestine.

There are many more recent examples of cooperation between the Saudis and Israelis. Following the 1962 coup in Sanaa that toppled Yemen’s monarchy and led to Egypt’s intervention to help the fledgling republicans, Saudi Arabia reached an agreement with Israel to supply the Yemeni royalists with weapons.

Many Israeli prime ministers have boasted about their secret meetings with Arab officials. In 2020, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz revealed that he had secretly visited all Arab countries, including Algeria, which had consistently said it wouldn’t deal with the Israelis. Even Iran under the Shah and Turkey when it was run by the military preferred to describe ties with Israel as a love affair, not a marriage.

For many years, former Secretary-General of the Saudi National Security Council Prince Bandar bin Sultan led efforts to forge secret relations with Israel – in coordination with Israel’s intelligence chief at the time, Shabtai Shavit. After the 9/11 attacks, Bandar, while still Saudi ambassador in Washington, assumed the task of coordinating ties between the Saudi security services and the U.S. and Israeli intel agencies to confront al-Qaida and the Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province. In a meeting with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Amman during Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah, Bandar suggested that Israel destroy Hezbollah in exchange for Saudi Arabia bearing the cost of the war.

There have been many secret visits by high-ranking Israeli officials to Saudi Arabia over the past decade to coordinate security against Iran. Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as well as former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in November 2020 – though the Saudi foreign minister later denied that the meeting took place. The two countries’ cooperation on the security front opened the door for Israel’s NSO Group Technologies to provide Saudi Arabia with its Pegasus spyware.

Despite the depth of the Saudis’ covert ties with Israel, they have publicly taken an uncompromising anti-Israeli position in regional and international arenas. When Egypt signed the Camp David Accords with Israel in 1978, Saudi Arabia was one of the fiercest critics and cut diplomatic ties with Egypt, describing the country as a traitor to the Arabs.

Slow Shift in Saudi Policy

Saudi Arabia has repeatedly proposed peace plans to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, but Israel has consistently rejected them. In August 1981, Saudi Crown Prince Fahd presented a peace plan that demanded Israel’s withdrawal from all the lands it occupied after the 1967 war in return for Riyadh’s affirmation of the right of all countries in the region to live in peace.

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs described it as a project to destroy Israel in stages. In 2002, King Abdullah proposed the Arab Peace Initiative, which Israel rejected because it required the creation of a

Palestinian state in return for full recognition and normalization of relations.

Meanwhile, the Saudis didn’t oppose the Israeli-UAE peace treaty. The Saudi foreign minister said Riyadh would welcome any development that would stop Israel’s annexation of Palestinian territory in the West Bank, after the Emiratis said the deal addressed the issue, though Israel denied this. The Saudi press also welcomed the accord, believing it could stop the expansion of Israeli settlements.

Israeli-Saudi relations began to develop publicly during the reign of King Salman. In February 2014, former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal participated in the Munich Security Conference alongside former Israeli Minister of Justice Tzipi Livni.

Al-Faisal also attended another meeting with the former head of Israeli military intelligence, Amos Yadlin, who invited him to visit Jerusalem, pray at al-Aqsa Mosque and address the Israeli people at the Knesset. For years, Saudi Arabia and Israel established economic relations via third parties whereby Israeli agricultural and technological products could reach the Saudi market from the West Bank, Jordan and Cyprus. Last July, Saudi Arabia opened its airspace to Israeli airlines, in a move that Prime Minister Yair Lapid considered the first official step toward normalization with Riyadh.

Peace Imperative

Israel’s move toward reconciliation with the Greater Middle East is part of its plan to expand its strategic and security sphere. The Saudis’ role here is pivotal. It outweighs that of the United Arab Emirates, and Abu Dhabi knows it.

For Israel, normalization with Saudi Arabia is the grand prize. If it can achieve this, it will no longer be a small country surrounded by a sea of adversaries but a regional power around which Arab countries can gather. For the Saudis, although they’re behind other Gulf countries in opening to the West, they realize the importance of this project if they want to market themselves as a center for foreign investment.

The Saudis feel that their country has grown weaker as the U.S. has grown more distant, especially given President Joe Biden’s view of Iran as a potential partner in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is therefore leaning toward Israel to compensate for its loss of Washington as a reliable partner and ally.

In 2011, billionaire Saudi Prince al-Walid bin Talal said he supported an Israeli attack on Iran. He later said he would be proud to become his country’s first ambassador to Israel. In 2017, MBS visited Tel Aviv to discuss regional issues and Israeli participation in Saudi Arabia’s giant NEOM development project on the Red Sea coast. Although MBS preferred to keep the visit a secret, it laid the foundation for cooperation on political, military and economic matters.

Israeli economists estimate that Israeli exports would increase by 30 percent if Saudi Arabia imported just 10 percent of its needs from Israel. In 2019, MBS approved a plan allowing Israeli Arabs to work and live in the kingdom without showing a passport. Earlier this year, dozens of representatives from the business and tech sectors arrived in Riyadh to discuss investment deals.

Saudi Apprehensions

Privately, MBS expresses concern over official normalization, fearing the Arab media would condemn him for establishing diplomatic relations with Israel, given the Saudis’ claim to be the protector of Islam and the guardian of its two most sacred religious sites. Saudi Arabia is competing for influence in the Islamic world with Turkey and Iran, and believes a peace agreement with Israel would weaken its case.

But popular support for normalization is increasing in Saudi Arabia, as well as in the UAE and Bahrain. The process will take time, and both countries are waiting for more favorable conditions to take shape.

But the security and economic interests of both countries are at stake, and MBS has already publicly acknowledged Israel’s right to exist. He attacked the Palestinian leadership, accusing it of corruption, mismanagement, missing opportunities to make peace and ingratitude for Riyadh’s generous financial aid. He needs Israel to help him realize his development goals. He even launched the NEOM project near its northwestern border to facilitate the movement of Israelis to the new megacity and encourage economic cooperation.

He wants to reach a peace agreement and is waiting to ascend the throne to make it happen.