Israeli Official Visits Riyadh Ahead of Biden’s Tour of Middle East
Saudi Arabia will not normalize with the Jewish state until Mohammed bin Salman becomes king, expert says
A senior Israeli official visited Saudi Arabia to discuss with his counterparts regional security and the possibility of enlarging cooperation, according to media reports.
The talks included meetings at the royal palace in Riyadh, Israeli Channel 12 reported, without giving further details.
US President Joe Biden’s expected tour to the Middle East next month is to include both countries. The US has advocated for better relations between two of its closest allies in the region.
Lately, the world has seen small steps toward warming relations made by the Saudi kingdom and the Jewish state.
Since September, Riyadh opened its airspace to some flights by Israeli airlines and lifted the ban for certain Israeli citizens entering the country, which has led to more Israeli businessmen traveling to close deals in the kingdom, and unofficial visits such as the one last week.
Marc J. Sievers, director of the American Jewish Committee’s office in Abu Dhabi: The Sidney Lerner Center for Arab-Jewish Understanding, and a former US ambassador to Oman, told The Media Line there have been Israeli-Saudi contacts through intelligence channels for many years. “These were intentionally kept secret,” he said.
He cited the time when then-Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu visited Saudi Arabia to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in November 2020, after the signing of the Abraham Accords normalizing Israel’s relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
“The Saudis officially denied that the visit took place and there were reports that the crown prince was angry about the visit leaking to the Israeli media,” he said.
Sievers added that the prince earlier this year described Israel as a “potential ally,” but also said he would have conditions for normalizing relations.
The Media Line reached out to the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem regarding last week’s visit; spokesperson David Baker responded, “I don’t have anything to offer about that report.”
Dr. Shaul Yanai, a Gulf specialist and lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told The Media Line that the unofficial relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia in recent years have been very important.
This is because the two states decided to share strategic plans to counter Tehran’s aggression in the region. “They are working against all the proxies and organizations that Iran has in the Middle East. The strategic game is to try and lock the expansion of Iran through the region as much as they can,” he said.
Dr. Yossi Mann, a senior lecturer at Reichman University in Herzliya and Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, and an expert on the Gulf, agrees.
The unofficial Israeli-Saudi relations are important for both sides, he told The Media Line. He added that the relations are probably advanced.
“I assume that the ties between both countries are very developed. I assume that Israel shares information with the Saudis, perhaps Israelis and Saudis are working to put more pressure on Washington to make sure that the [possibly revived nuclear] agreement with Iran will be more stable,” he said.
The cooperation goes beyond security issues.
Economically, added Yanai, “Israel and Saudi Arabia are doing very interesting projects including in the fields of cyber security, IP [internet protocol] information, and also sharing, in my opinion, satellites’ information.”
He also added that trade through third countries is growing year by year.
Yanai added, “We have not even started to reach the potential. There is a huge potential. The Saudis declared that they want the Israeli know-how in various fields.”
In 2016, Prince Mohammed launched the Saudi Vision 2030 project, to diversify the kingdom’s economy, as well as develop and modernize it in various fields.
There are plenty of sectors in which Israel and Saudi Arabia could cooperate, said Mann, adding that food and technology show the most potential.
“Now that they are doing the reforms, they will need more technology and more knowledge,” he said.
He added that the Saudis are looking for alternatives to the United States. This, he explained, is because the Americans have shown an intent to decrease their presence in the Middle East, and they have taken a certain distance from Saudi Arabia because of human rights concerns.
Mann argued that the Saudis are looking for an alternative to supply them with know-how, technology, and services, and “Israel would be a good alternative.”
The kingdom could buy goods and weapons from Israel, share agricultural knowledge, and even think about exporting its energy resources to Europe through Israel, he said.
Still, full normalization is not in the cards yet.
Sievers noted that economic ties with Israel would certainly contribute to both countries’ prosperity.
However, he added that most commentators on Saudi Arabia believe the crown prince will not move ahead too far on normalization while his father, King Salman, is alive.
Salman, 86, is the 25th son of King Abdel Aziz Al Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia, and the sixth of his sons to have reigned as king. He is opposed to establishing relations with Israel before there is a settlement of the Palestinian issue.
Mann added that the Americans need to guarantee the security of Saudi Arabia before any normalization accord is signed. “Without any guarantee from the Americans that if Iran attacks the kingdom, they will respond, they will not sign an agreement,” he said.
Yanai explained the complexity of the matter by pointing out the important status of Saudi Arabia in the Arab and Muslim world.
“Saudi Arabia wants to be the leader of the Arab and the Muslim world,” he said. “If they tried to normalize their relationship with Israel without solving the Palestinian issue, the leaders feel that they would be in danger,” he said.
