Israeli diplomats like to speak of the difference between cold and hostile public comments toward the Jewish state uttered by their Arab and Muslim counterparts and warmer private ones. However, the reason—with the possible exception of the UAE—that contrast still exists is the fact that hatred for Zionism and vicious antisemitism is the rule in the region, regardless of whether a war is going on. The leaders of moderate Arab nations know that letting a Palestinian national movement that cannot move beyond its dreams of Israel’s destruction hold them hostage to those fantasies is a mistake. But while the authoritarian rulers of these states do, as a general rule, ignore public sentiment, even a stable regime such as that in Riyadh knows that such governments are not invulnerable to threats of being toppled.
Moreover, for all of the optimism about the inevitability of their transforming their under-the-table good relations with Israel into one of open recognition, it’s not clear that it was ever a possibility. Even when it was being formally discussed after the Biden administration belatedly began pushing for their joining the Abraham Accords (though Biden’s team hated using the name because it was Trump’s signature foreign-policy achievement), the terms the Saudis asked for demonstrated that they weren’t really serious about it. The price they demanded in exchange for normalization included a formal defense pact with the United States and Washington gifting them a nuclear program—two things that were never going to happen under any circumstances.
The Saudis knew this, and by asking for the moon in this manner, they were sending a signal to much of the world, including many Americans and Israelis who ought to have known better.
Nor would it have been worth it for Israel to acquiesce to the principal demand made of them: the creation of a Palestinian state.
That has been a key element of the price tag the Saudis put on their joining the accords. That sounded right to an American foreign-policy establishment that continued to believe that a two-state solution was the only way to end the conflict. Of course, as Palestinians have made clear, over and over again, they have no interest in the idea if it means they’ll have to commit themselves to living in peace with a Jewish state, no matter where its borders are drawn.
After the Second Intifada (2000-2005), and then Oct. 7, the once broad Israeli support for the concept has evaporated. Even most left-wing Israelis know that the Palestinians aren’t interested in peace. Acquiescing to demands for Palestinian statehood would have meant repeating the same catastrophic blunder made by the late Ariel Sharon when he withdrew from the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2005, thus setting in motion the events that allowed Hamas to seize control of the coastal enclave and eventually to be able to commit the atrocities in southern Israel on Oct. 7. Doing so in the far larger and more strategic areas of Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) would have endangered the very existence of the state.
It’s equally true that the Saudis have no real desire to help create another failed Arab state that would, in all likelihood, be a perfect target to be taken over by Islamists—in this case, Hamas. Yet even before the Palestinians won general Arab and Muslim sympathy by launching a war on Oct. 7 with an orgy of mass murder, rape, torture, kidnapping and wanton destruction, the Saudis were only using the statehood issue to help deflect pressure to join the Abraham Accords.
That should serve as a reminder to Israelis and Americans not to be too disappointed by the Saudis’ decision to attempt to reclaim their status as the leader of Islamist rejectionist forces in the region, a stance that, in recent years, they surrendered to Qatar.
Would it ever have been worthwhile for Israel to have made such a grave sacrifice of its security concerns in exchange for Saudi recognition?
For Israelis, having the Saudis embrace them fully and openly as partners would have signaled the end of the Muslim world’s refusal to accept the Jewish state’s permanent place in the region. But setting up a situation where the Palestinian Authority would likely have been toppled by Hamas would have been suicidal. The scenario in which Hamas assumes control of the territories is a guarantee of nothing but another and even more bloody round of war.
As much as it’s nice to dream of a world where the region could truly be transformed into a “new Middle East,” such as the one that the late Shimon Peres dreamed of when he agreed to the 1993 Oslo Accords, 33 years later, Israelis still don’t live in such a world.
That’s why it is far better to keep such fantasies out of efforts to ensure that the Saudis remain outside of coalitions bent on Israel’s destruction. The Riyadh regime may still hope to develop its economy and needs to modernize its society to achieve that; however, it is never going to be entirely divorced from the Wahabi extremism that put their family in control of the Arabian Peninsula in the first place.
And so, Americans and Israelis should stop chasing after the vain hope of getting the desert kingdom to behave as if it is anything other than the Islamist regime that it has always been and likely always will be. The Saudis will always act in their own best interests, and if that lines up with a more Israel-friendly policy, then they’ll do that. And being realists and still desirous of friendly relations with the United States, there will be limits on how far they will go in terms of open hostility to Israel. But they can neither be persuaded nor bribed to give up their basic character.
It’s long past time for Washington and Jerusalem to acknowledge this fact and stop trying to pretend that Saudi Arabia is anything other than what it is. It may not be at war with Israel and may even prefer for it to, along with the United States, continue to act to deter Islamist forces that are hostile to Riyadh, even if they are no longer worried about Iran. But it’s never going to be a real friend or ally of a Jewish state.