Hamas will score very few victories in its war against Israel, but it has already managed to abruptly halt the push toward a U. S. -brokered deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Saudi-Israeli deal would have damaged a new floor by normalizing relations between the two countries, bringing Saudi Arabia closer to the U. S. security fold and provoking Israeli compromises on the Palestinian issue. Indeed, fears of a rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia would possibly have been one of the main drivers of Hamas’s attack on October 7.
The war leaves Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MBS, in a tricky position, at least in the short term. It aspires to regional stability, which would make it less complicated for it to pursue its purpose of diversifying the Saudi economy. and reduce their dependence on oil exports. The horrific violence and the risk of wider escalation jeopardize their progress on this front. MBS now also faces competing pressures inside and outside the country, with U. S. and European leaders calling on Saudi Arabia to play a leading role in the Gaza Strip and post-Hamas regional and country teams urging Riyadh to more actively assist the Palestinians in this hour of crisis.
Most likely, both sides in the bitter fighting that oppose Riyadh will be disappointed. Saudi Arabia has neither the ability nor the inclination to deploy troops to the post-war Gaza Strip or to massively fund the reconstruction of Gaza. demonstrated any willingness to use the equipment at their disposal, such as their ability to decrease oil production or exports to put pressure on Israel and the United States. Although an agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia is out of the question for now, the incentives that led Saudi Arabia to detect Israel have not disappeared. MBS’s ambitious economic goals for Saudi Arabia can only be achieved in a Middle East that is strong and with strong ties to the United States. This long-term program will shape its course of action in the current conflict.
Prior to Hamas’s wonderful attack on Israel, the Biden leadership had made remarkable strides in its efforts to negotiate Israel’s Saudi popularity. There were significant obstacles to reaching an agreement, namely the divergent interests of the three parties. The Saudis demanded concrete Israeli steps for the Palestinian Authority’s political prospects, opening at least the option of negotiations toward a two-state solution. Given the far-right composition of the Israeli government, such measures were unlikely. Riyadh’s demands on the United States were also far-reaching, adding a formal guarantee of security and assistance in building a Saudi civilian nuclear infrastructure without the promises Washington demanded from its previous partners. However, there was a sense of progress. Less than three weeks before the Hamas attack, MBS told Fox News that “every day we are getting closer” to negotiations.
Possibly that would have been the case, but the Palestinian factor was going to be an obstacle. Although the taboo on relations with Israel in the Gulf countries has disappeared in recent years, Arab public opinion remains involved in the Palestinian cause. Consequently, Arab leaders will have to at least give the impression that they are doing the same. Even before the war, Saudi Arabia had signaled that Israel would have to do something really extensive regarding the Palestinian factor as a precondition for normalization. In August, as talks with Israel progressed, Saudi Arabia named its first ambassador to the Palestinians, a move many interpreted as a demonstration of Riyadh’s commitment to press for Israel to fulfill Palestinian promises. To achieve a rapprochement with Riyadh, Israel would have to do more than it did before the Abraham Accords, a series of 2020-2021 normalization agreements between Israel and Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates. As part of the agreements, Israel had agreed to abandon plans it had introduced to annex 30% of the West Bank, thus extending its sovereignty over the territory it currently occupies, a move that would have well ended the prospect of a two-state solution. .
MBS’s ambitious economic goals for Saudi Arabia can be achieved in a strong Middle East.
Modest measures such as these will no longer suffice. The horrific consequences of the Israeli army’s attack on Gaza on Palestinian civilians have raised the bar even higher. As long as Israel is absorbed into Gaza and Arab public opinion is mobilized toward the Palestinians, the Israeli-Saudi deal will remain a failure.
Saudi Arabia’s willingness to consider a deal with Israel reflects a broader shift in its foreign policy. When MBS came into force with his father’s accession to the throne in 2015, the Saudi crown prince set the country on an ambitious path of economic recovery and began influencing Riyadh in the region, in an effort to counter his main rival. . Iran. In alliance with the United Arab Emirates, he launched a war to roll back the strength of the Iran-backed Houthi movement in Yemen. He organized a blockade of Qatar because of its aid to Sunni Islamist groups, including Hamas. When Saad al-Hariri, then Lebanese prime minister, stopped in Riyadh in 2017, MBS forced him to resign from his post, hoping that a political crisis in Lebanon would harm Iran’s best friend, Hezbollah. (Hariri rescinded his resignation after returning home. ) And MBS escalated his rhetoric toward Tehran. “We will not wait for the war to be fought in Saudi Arabia,” he said, announcing that Iran was seeking to take control of Islamic holy sites in his country. “Instead, we will work to ensure that the war for them is in Iran and not in Saudi Arabia. »Most importantly for Americans, in 2018 he ordered the murder of US-based dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi during Khashoggi’s stopover at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
MBS’s foreign competitive stance has backfired in many ways, as he failed to harm his enemies and alienated his foreign supporters, adding U. S. President Joe Biden, who, as a 2020 presidential candidate, had vowed to make Riyadh a foreign “pariah. “Following this reaction, Riyadh has replaced its regional technique in recent years, emphasizing discussion and the search for stability. A ceasefire with the Houthis in Yemen has lasted more than a year and a half. The Saudi-led boycott of Qatar ended in early 2021. More importantly, Saudi Arabia reached out to China to negotiate the resumption of diplomatic relations with Iran this year. All this is done within the framework of MBS’s economic reform program, Vision 2030, which aims to diversify the Saudi economy and reduce its dependence on oil exports. Riyadh is under pressure from the need for regional stability to foster the foreign investment, regional integration and economic progress it aspires to. It is in this context that the American mediation between Israel and Saudi Arabia took place.
Saudi hopes for regional stability in further economic progress were dashed on October 7. Riyadh does not like Hamas, which has created the crisis. The Saudis feared and opposed the political gains made through the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Tunisia, and elsewhere during the Arab Spring; Hamas is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. On the other hand, the Saudis cannot be considered to have a separate status (or worse, to proceed to negotiate with Israel) while the Israelis attack the Palestinians in Gaza. Riyadh has an interest in ending the fighting and moving toward a nonviolent settlement on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, but it has few levers that it can or will use to advance this purpose at this time.
U. S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and several U. S. commentators have warned that Arab states could play a role in Gaza’s post-war administration. Diplomatic discussions in that regard have already begun. The most ambitious proposals call for Saudi Arabia to provide military and administrative supplies. to govern Gaza after the war. Smaller proposals still assign the role of investment in the reconstruction of Gaza to the Saudis. But Riyadh will not allow itself to appear to be cleaning up Israel’s mess in Gaza. Saudi Arabia’s internal security forces do not delight in operating outside their borders. The poor functionality of the Saudi military in Yemen is not a recommendation for deployment elsewhere. And Saudi forces have never acted as peacekeepers under the U. N. flag.
It is conceivable that Saudi Arabia would be willing to play a monetary role in a UN-approved transitional management leading to the regaining of Palestinian Authority control in Gaza. But this role would not resemble previous Saudi aid deals, which amounted to currencies. Transfers to privileged customers. Riyadh made it clear during recent negotiations with currency-stricken Egypt that it prefers investment opportunities to currency transfers. Its technique toward Gaza will be similar, unless the U. S. is willing to melt the deal with Riyadh’s kind of diplomatic providence. expected from Washington in exchange for a rapprochement with Israel.
After the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, also known as the Yom Kippur War, Saudi Arabia and other Arab oil manufacturers imposed an oil embargo on the United States to punish Washington for its rights to Israel. The embargo and accompanying oil production hit Saudis and others caused oil costs to quadruple, an era evoked in the United States through the symbol of long lines outside gas stations. The World Bank, the International Energy Agency and monetary executives, including JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon, are among those warning that a new oil crisis, echoing the surprise of 1973-1974, may be on the horizon.
These considerations are exaggerated, in part because they are based on a false impression of what happened in 1973. Contrary to the myth surrounding it, the much-vaunted embargo has had little effect. Big oil corporations have just redirected materials from other sources, such as South America, West Africa, and Iran. The infamous lines at U. S. gas stations had more to do with price controls, allocation regulations, and customer panic than significant nationwide shortages. The value of oil rose due to cutbacks in Arab markets. Oil production in the last months of 1973 spooked markets, although it later became apparent that world oil reserves were not particularly affected. The panic created by Arab oil manufacturers who announced their strength enough to drive up prices. The source and the global call helped keep values at the top for the rest of the decade, before the Iranian Revolution of 1979 caused a momentary shock.
Even if policymakers and business leaders feel haunted by the specter of the embargo, they deserve reassurance that the existing situations are very different from those of 1973. At the time, Saudi Arabia was strongly aligned with Egypt and Syria, Israel’s countries. An equivalent sense of solidarity with Hamas, an Iranian-allied branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Some observers are concerned about production cuts, but the Saudis have already reduced production by almost two million barrels per day from the end of 2022 in an effort to boost prices. (These efforts have had little effect: prices currently hover between $80 and $85 per barrel, well below the $100 per barrel forecast over the summer. ) Riyadh would have no interest in additional production cuts, which would likely have no effect. it would give some influence to Saudi Arabia and alienate consumers not only in the United States but also in China. Most importantly, MBS has no interest in Saudi Arabia being consistently perceived as a country where politics trumps profits, especially since his main goal is the economic transformation of his country. MBS demonstrated his determined commitment to pursuing this goal, even in the existing turmoil: last October, with dire news from Gaza, Saudi Arabia held its annual Future Investment Initiative conference, finalized by leading monetary figures. of the entire world. MBS should be seen as a reliable economic partner, not a disruptor wielding an “oil gun. ”
The Gaza crisis will end, like all crises. This will most likely take months than weeks, suspending any further diplomatic efforts in the Middle East. As long as there are Israeli troops in Gaza, the chances of regaining momentum in the oblique Israeli-brokered dispute through the Biden administration are slim to none.
But the points that motivated those negotiations have not changed. Israel would very much like to have closer relations with Saudi Arabia. The Saudis would like to take advantage of the dynamism of the Israeli economy, as the United Arab Emirates has done since the signing of the Abraham Accords. Israel and Saudi Arabia still view Iran as a regional threat, offering a strategic drag on the pursuit of closer economic ties. Saudi demands that Israel take concrete steps toward a Palestinian state will remain an obstacle, though perhaps less so if the war in Gaza leads to a new, more flexible Israeli government. Most likely, the negotiation will return.
In this context, it is vital not to forget that any Arab agreement with Israel has been, fundamentally, an Arab agreement with the United States. This applies to the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, which opened the door to U. S. foreign negotiations. and military aid to Egypt; by the 1994 Israeli-Jordanian peace agreement, which returned Washington’s favor to Jordan after Saddam Hussein’s in the 1990-1991 Gulf War; and for the 2020-2021 Abraham Accords, which concerned the U. S. popularity of Morocco’s annexation of Western Sahara, the lifting of the U. S. designation of Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism, and the Trump administration’s promise that the UAE could acquire the F-35 fighter. airplanes (a commitment that Biden’s management later suspended). The prospect of such benefits will remain interesting to Saudi Arabia, regardless of what happens in Israel and Gaza.
An eventual return to talks between Saudi Arabia and Israel will also mean a return to U. S. -Saudi negotiations on Riyadh’s wish list: a security guarantee and the United States for Saudi nuclear progress without the limits of promises Washington has imposed on others. If the U. S. can refocus on Saudi-Israeli diplomacy, it will have to ask whether the value of Saudi-Israeli normalization is worth the burden of new U. S. military commitments and an increased threat of nuclear weapons proliferation in the region. But for now, Washington can defend the concerns: As long as the standoff in Gaza persists, the Saudi-Israeli deal will remain frozen.