The secret ties that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed to have with Saudi Arabia have been around for years and have been unraveled in a few days.
Netanyahu spoke explicitly in an interview with Channel 14 when he visited Washington last week.
“We had a secret relationship for almost three years. On our side, the three of us knew that. On their side, we were involved in this, as in the case of the American side. There were also a very small number of people: “Netanyahu boasted.
If it is true and not different from Netanyahu’s production, this relationship can be revealed with the consent of the other side. The third possibility is that this statement, like many others in the past week, is a bully’s act.
However, the kingdom-Israel relationship is based on as personal as the national ambitions.
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As an unknown prince facing harsh opposition from powerful members of the royal family, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has found his path to power at home lying through Tel Aviv and Washington. Ta.
Once established as crown prince, bin Salman continued to put Israel on trial and made a secret visit in 2017. He praised the views of American Jews who expressed a lighthearted headlines on the Palestinian cause.
A year later, he denounced Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who told them to negotiate with Israel or “shut up.”
Before the Hamas-led attack on Israel, MBS approached to placing his signature on Abraham’s agreement.
Even after Hamas attacked, Saudi Arabia maintained its business as usual.
There is no room for operation
For 15 months, ProPalestinian protests were not tolerated and the festival continued while Gaza wept. It was even prohibited to raise the Palestinian flag by pilgrims in Mecca or pray for Gaza.
Neither the death toll in Gaza, nor Lebanon’s invasion, nor military operations in the occupied West Bank changed Saudi Lines.
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The Crown Prince even prepared to tolerate some degree of humiliation at the hands of US President Donald Trump. Trump asked which country he would visit first, saying Saudi Arabia would have to pay $500 million in US contracts for the privilege of his existence.
After a warm call from MBS, the Kingdom has promised $600 million. Trump then said demand should be increased and the numbers should be like $1 trillion.
“We were very good for them, so they’re going to do that,” Trump told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
When Trump revealed plans to own Gaza after the mass relocation of Palestinians, he said the cleanup operation bill would be sent to the Gulf countries, which means Saudi Arabia. This especially irritated Riyadh.
Trump also boasted that Saudi Arabia would normalize with Israel without a Palestinian state. “So Saudi Arabia will be very helpful. And they will be very helpful. They want peace in the Middle East. That’s very easy,” Trump said.
It took Riad only 45 minutes to reply to what has come to be known as the Dawn Statement.
There was little space for operation.
“His Royal Hall of Fame emphasized that Saudi Arabia will continue its relentless efforts to establish an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, and that it will not establish relations with Israel without it.”
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia also reaffirms its clear denial of infringement of Palestinians’ legitimate rights, whether it seeks to reconcile Israeli policy, annexation of land or drive Palestinians out of their land. …Saudi Arabia’s Kingdom of Arabia emphasizes that this unwavering position is unnegotiable and not subject to compromise.”
Since then, a war of words has been packed with.
In an interview with Channel 14, Netanyahu gave the victory roll. He said that if Saudi Arabia is very keen on creating a Palestinian state, they can do it on their territory. “Saudi Arabia can create a Palestinian state in Saudi Arabia. They have a lot of land there.”
This sparked further choruses of condemnation from the Arab world, including Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Iraq, Qatar and Kuwait.
In a second statement this week, Riyadh said he “resolutely refused any statements intended to distract attention from the ongoing crimes committed by Israeli occupation of the Palestinian brothers in Gaza.
The statement was once again not left to the imagination. “This extremist, occupation idea doesn’t understand what Palestinian land means to the Palestinian brothers and the emotional, historical and legal connections to this land,” he said.
The Palestinians have rights to their lands and are “not intruders or immigrants whose hopes for brutal Israeli occupation could be banished at any time.”
A past era
In just a few days, Trump and Netanyahu canceled all their jobs. They were those who erupted the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco in their arms to sign the Abraham agreement.
In an interview with Fox News, Netanyahu did not suffer any pain in his purpose to do this. He said it was done to stand by the Palestinians. Netanyahu poured light corn into Saudi sensibilities.
Netanyahu now says that he will impose peace on the Arab world.
“After completing the switch in the Middle East, we cut down further Iran’s axis and make sure Iran does not have nuclear weapons and destroy Hamas, setting the stage for an additional agreement with Saudi Arabia. And others With people.
“By the way, I also believe in the Muslim world because it is peace through strength. When we stand so strong and together, it was disputed that it became insurmountable. It changes,” he said.
To this day, Netanyahu had told UAE Presidents MBS and Mohammed Bin Zayed that he would deal with them as an alliance.
Now he said that he would impose peace on them by force, this is not a relationship of equality, and the Arab world would rawen upon him when Israel conquered everything.
All of this is forced to go back to Saudi Arabian foreign policy, fifty years and to the time of King Faisal’s Arab nationalist.
And for the first time in 15 months, there is a real prospect that the forefront of Arab countries, formed from a very stationary country in Israel, will emerge.
Importantly, former Saudi Arabian Intelligence Director Trukial Faisal wears a keffiyy who warned of “group action” not only by the Arab and Muslim worlds but also by Europe.
Late Sunday, Egypt announced that it would hold an emergency Arab Summit on February 27 to discuss “new and dangerous developments” after Trump proposed resettlement of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The bridge is too far
It was the adoption of mass population relocation as an official policy for Israel and the United States that caused this change.
For decades, it has not been touched on the dusty shelf of political debate on the extremist wing of religious Zionism. Now it is a mainstream policy in Israel and the US.
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Not only will it challenge Israel’s immediate neighbours Egypt and Jordan, but the forced transfer of two million Palestinians will have an impact on all Arab states, particularly the Saudi Kingdom.
The perceived threat in the Arab capital has grown as Trump doubled with mass relocations and Netanyahu has called it “the purest and freshest idea of all time.”
The religious Zionist movement claims territory well beyond its current borders with Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. Daniela Weiss, the leader of the settlers movement, is not shy about expressing the territory range of land promised by God to the Jews.
“This is God’s promise to the patriarch of the Jewish state. It is 3,000 kilometers, about the same size as the Sahara Desert. It is part of Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia.”
Without its former extremist national security minister Itamar Ben Gwil, Israel occupying Syrian lands more than the Gaza Strip, which does not count the heights of the occupied Golan. He refuses to leave Lebanon. It has not kept its plans to divide Syria into cantons secret, employing rhetoric that is increasingly hostile to Turkey.
It’s only a matter of time before Israel’s territorial expansion destabilizes the entire region with disastrous consequences for the Saudi Kingdom.
Separately, the factors that led to the Gulf states’ static to the Palestinian conflict have ceased to exist even if they were rather clear in 2017.
Israel and the first Trump administration sold the Abraham Accord as part of the anti-Iran agreement.
But now that Iran’s resistance axis has been weakened by the loss of Syria and the abuse Hezbollah took in the war, Saudi Arabia correctly calculates that it’s not their interest to push Iran further into the corner.
In particular, the first oil equipment that Iran’s drone strikes feel retaliatory will be theirs. Riyadh’s relationship with the new Iranian president is warm and MBS wants to keep them that way.
MBS is also in a different position. He has solid control over his kingdom and is considered by people younger than him as a popular modernization leader. It is now behind him that he was using, as he was climbing the oily pole pole.
It gives him the opportunity to strip Israel and distance himself from Trump, and return to the moral and economic epicenter of the Arab and Muslim worlds.
By taking off Israel and keeping his distance from Trump, he gives him the opportunity to return to the moral and economic epicenter of the Arab and Muslim worlds
The kingdom is no longer isolated from the Muslim world as it was when MBS came to power. I enjoy a warm relationship with Türkiye. Offshore there is a $6 billion deal, and Riyadh has gone to the market to buy warships, tanks and missiles from Ankara.
MBS also knows how popular Palestinian causes are at home. According to Atlantic’s account of a conversation with former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, he personally doesn’t care about the Palestinian issue, but he said 70% of him are younger than him.
“For most of them, they really didn’t know much about the Palestinian issue, and they’re only introduced to it through this conflict. That’s a big issue. Do you personally care about the Palestinian issue? T, but my people do so, so we need to make sure this makes sense,” MBS reportedly said.
What will MBS gain from shaking Netanyahu’s bloody hands in public?
Today, such a photo shoot only has a long list of negatives for him.
too late
On Tuesday, Jordan’s King Abdullah arrives in Washington and hopes to hear messages from the Arab world. It’s not intense. It’s not spoken of because of weakness. That’s true.
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As a result of Israel flattening Gaza, expelling more than 2 million people, allowing Jordan and Egypt to accept them, and forcing the rich Arab countries to rebuild it, it is in fact all It will transcend the Middle East beyond recognition. Netanyahu is right about that.
It will spark the United States in religious conflicts that boil long after Trump and Netanyahu’s bodies were lowered to the ground.
Trump pragmatists should wake up.
The only lesson of the useless war that America has been through this century under Republican and Democrat presidents is that they will surely start and end in chaos, and last much longer than America hopes.
It’s Trump’s job to end the war. Netanyahu’s openly declared task is to continue this and expand it to tame the entire region.
That’s why it’s in the best interest of isolating the United States, being isolated, nationalist, inwardly inward, abandoning his dreams of Netanyahu and Israel today.
Because tomorrow may be too late.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of the Middle Eastern eye.
