The Israeli-Saudi Rapprochement is an Old Story
But a complicated contest for nuclear supremacy awaits
Much has been written recently about the Israel-Arab rapprochement in the Gulf, notably the prospect of an historic Saudi-Israel entente.
The often-breathless punditry associated with these developments, however, ignores not only the solid basis of effective Israel-Saudi strategic cooperation that has long existed, in some cases for decades, but also discounts vital considerations that may limit and even reverse the existing record of accomplishment.
Challenging Israel’s Strategic Umbrella over the Gulf
Saudi officials have lived for many years with the knowledge that Israel long ago spread its nuclear umbrella over this region in a manner that effectively protects Riyad from the predations of a hostile Iran.
Israel’s interest was and remains not so much to assure Saudi security but rather as a reflection of Israel’s determination not to permit Iran to develop and operationalize a nuclear weapons option, or to permit Pakistan (or Washington) to enable an “Arab bomb” in what it considers to be its strategic backyard.
From the days of Ben Gurion in the 1950s, Israel has devoted considerable resources to develop and maintain its nuclear weapons hegemony in the region. Israel has used this capability to win credible US assurances to maintain Israel’s qualitative military conventional superiority over any combination of regional antagonists and Washington’s acceptance of Israel’s ambiguous commitment not to be “the first to introduce nuclear weapons in the region.”
It was Ariel Sharon who confidently warned in 1982 that Israel’s strategic environment includes the expansive area from Morocco east to Pakistan, and south to the Gulf.
In this arena, Israel has worked actively and with great success to maintain its nuclear monopoly both diplomatically and operationally.
Nowadays, issues relating to the nuclear pretensions of countries in the Gulf, notably Iran and Saudi Arabia, are an important component of the energy driving Saudi relations with both Jerusalem and Washington.
MBS, the reforming millennial autocrat, is clearly anxious to extend Saudi power and influence. Israel and the United States would be remiss if they excluded a Saudi interest in becoming a nuclear power in both the civilian and military realms from MBs’ wide-ranging and indeed, in the Saudi context, revolutionary objectives.
The ascension of the Crown Prince in Saudi Arabia has added this new nuclear element to the regional equation--- prompting Israel and the United States to consider the limits that should be placed upon grandiose Saudi objectives.
The End of the Arab Peace Initiative
In recent years, Red Sea security has been updated by a precedent-setting trilateral understanding, blessed by Washington, among Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia that resulted in Egypt’s recent withdrawal from the Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir as part of its recognition of Saudi sovereignty there.
For those trumpeting the conventional security benefits of a potential Saudi-Israel rapprochement, this understanding is proof that this ship has already sailed.
Since the 1950s, ensuring the freedom of international marine navigation in the Straits of Tiran and unhindered Israeli access to the Gulf of Aqaba have been at the center of the region’s wars and symbols of the progress towards peace.
Moshe Ya’alon, Israel’s minister of security at the time, noted in 2016 that Riyadh had provided written assurances that the kingdom will guarantee Israel freedom of passage in the Straits of Tiran established by the Israel-Egypt peace agreement 4 decades ago.
https://www.mei.edu/publications/red-sea-islands-deal-undermines-arab-peace-initiative
Then-Saudi foreign minister Adel al-Jubeir explained that Riyadh would honor the Israel-Egypt peace treaty’s terms as regards the islands.
“The commitments that Egypt approved [in the peace treaty] we are also committed to, including the stationing of an international force on the islands. ... We are committed to what Egypt committed to before the international community.”
Indeed, even the small MFO contingent deployed as part of the historic Israel-Egypt peace agreement is now reported by former US military official to have left the island.
https://www.mei.edu/publications/whither-mfo-us-presence-sinai-has-seen-its-best-days
Rethinking Palestine
The Saudi-Israeli agreement on Red Sea security is relevant to the Saudi view on Palestine, for it signaled a Saudi willingness to forego the basic element of the peace plans it has promoted since the Fahd Plan of 1981; that is, to condition an Arab reconciliation with Israel on an end to the Israel occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip and the creation of a Palestinian state.
MBS’s views on this critical subject are a source of greater concern to Palestinians than to Israel.
As long ago as 2017, MBS informed a startled Palestinian president that it was time for Plan B -- a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip, fattened by undetermined Egyptian transfers of land in the Sinai Peninsula. When Mahmoud Abbas asked about the place of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in this scheme, MBS replied, “We can continue to negotiate about this.”
In other words, forget it.
The recent Saudi decision to appoint Riyadh’s first-ever non-resident ambassador to Palestine, as well as its first-ever non-resident consul general to Jerusalem is not inconsistent with this view.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/did-saudi-arabia-just-try-to-give-the-west-bank-to-israel/
MBS’ vision, like many of his generation, is conditioned by considerations foreign and indeed antithetical to his predecessors. Today Israel is often viewed as an opportunity rather than as an enemy. The current generation of Arab leaders has come to power in an environment conditioned by Israel’s formal reconciliation with both Egypt and Jordan, and an interminable “peace process” between Israel and the PLO.
If the past is prologue, both the limits and the opportunities of shared interests between Israel and Saudi Arabia will be at the heart of the region’s diplomatic and security agenda.
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