Why a peace deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia looks closer...

Saudi Arabia’s rulers, historically critical of Israel and its treatment of Palestinians, are finally coming more close to the normalization of relations with the country, often referred to in the past by the Arab media, with disdain, as “the Zionist entity”?

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What sparked strong speculation on social media was the set of hard-hitting interviews given to TV Al-Arabiya by the former Saudi intelligence chief and longtime Washington ambassador, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan al-Saud, who criticized Palestinian leaders for disapproving the recent peace movements with Israel by Arab Gulf states.

“This low level of speech is not what we expect from officials looking to gain global support for their cause,” Prince Bandar said in the interview. “Their transgression (Palestinian leaders) against the leadership of the Gulf States with this damning speech is totally unacceptable.”

Palestinian leaders initially described the normalization of the UAE and Bahrain’s relations with Israel as “betrayal” and “a stab in the back”.

Prince Bandar, who spent a remarkable 22 years as Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Washington and was so close to former US President George W. Bush that he used to be nicknamed Bandar Bin Bush, spoke of the “historical failures” of Palestinian leadership . He took Saudi support for granted, he said.

Prince Bandar criticized Palestinian leaders for disapproving the recent peace movements with Israel by Arab Gulf states – Photo: Getty Images / BBC

Although he made a point of calling the Palestinian cause “just”, he also blamed the leaders of Israel and Palestine for failing to reach a peace agreement after so many years.

How, he argued, referring to the split between the Palestinian Authority, which rules in the West Bank, and the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas, which holds power in Gaza, can Palestinians reach a fair deal when their leaders cannot even agree with each other?

Those words by Bandar, said a Saudi official close to the ruling family, would not have been broadcast on Saudi-owned television without the prior approval of King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.

Saudi society has undergone radical changes for local culture in recent years – Photo: Getty Images / BBC

Choosing Prince Bandar, a veteran diplomat and longtime pillar of the Saudi royal establishment to say so, said the official, was the clearest sign that the Saudi leadership may be preparing its population for an eventual agreement with Israel.

It seems that both by Prince Bandar’s words and by silently endorse the recent normalization of relations from the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to Israel, the Saudi leadership is moving faster towards rapprochement with Israel than a large part of its own population.

For many years, especially in the most rural and isolated areas of the kingdom, the Saudis got used to seeing not only Israel as the enemy, but also the entire Jewish people.

I remember a village in the mountains of Asir province, where a Saudi told me very seriously that “on one day of the year Jews drink baby blood”.

Saudi Arabia has one of the highest rates of social media use in the region – Photo: Getty Images / BBC

Thanks to the internet and satellite TV, this type of conspiracy theory is more rare in the kingdom now. The Saudis spend a lot of time online and are generally better informed about world affairs than people in the West.

However, given the xenophobia and historical suspicion of outsiders that exist among certain parts of the Saudi population, it will take time to reverse this type of idea, which is why the Saudi Arabia has not rushed to follow its Gulf neighbors to sign a historic agreement.

The history of Saudi Arabia and Gulf countries’ relations with the Palestinians is troubled. The Gulf governments nominally supported the Palestinian cause, both politically and financially, for decades.

But when Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat supported Iraqi President Saddam Hussein when he invaded and occupied Kuwait in 1990, they felt betrayed.

Saddam Hussein during the 2006 trial – Photo: CHRIS HONDROS / POOL / AFP

After Operation Desert Storm led by the United States and the liberation of Kuwait in 1991, that country expelled the entire Palestinian expat community, replacing them with thousands of Egyptian workers.

Visiting Kuwait that year, I noticed some Arabic graffiti scrawled on the side of an abandoned pizzeria.

“Al-Quds da’iman lil’Sihyouneen, w’ana Kuwaiti ‘, it said.” Jerusalem is the eternal home of the Zionists, and I am a Kuwaiti (writing this) “.

It took a long time for the region’s oldest rulers to overcome Arafat’s “betrayal.” Ironically, perhaps, one of the people most actively engaged in curing fissures in the Arab world was the Kuwaiti emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, who died last month at the age of 91.

Saudi Arabia has a history when it comes to showing interest in reaching an agreement with Israel.

In March 2002, I was at the Arab Summit in Beirut, where a thin, urban, bald man with perfect English was walking around the event explaining something called the then Crown Prince Abdullah’s Peace Plan.

The man was Adel Jubair, then a foreign affairs advisor at the Crown Prince’s court, now the minister of foreign affairs of saudi arabia. The peace plan dominated that year’s summit and was unanimously approved by the Arab League.

Essentially, offered Israel full normalization with the entire Arab world in exchange for the withdrawal of all occupied territories, including the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and Lebanon, as well as ceded East Jerusalem as its capital, reaching a “just solution” for Palestinian refugees who, in the Arab-Israeli war of 1948-49, were expelled from their homes in what became Israel.

The plan received international support and briefly put Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the spotlight. Here, at last, there seemed to be a chance to end the Arab-Israeli historic conflict for good.

But just before the plan was published, Hamas bombed an Israeli hotel in Netanya, killing 30 people and wounding more than 100. All the peace talks were out of the debate.

After 18 years, the Middle East has changed in many ways, although the Palestinians have not yet conquered an independent state and Israeli settlements deemed illegal under international law continue to invade Palestinian lands in the West Bank.

The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan and Egypt have already made peace with Israel and have full diplomatic relations.

In fact, unlike the tense “cold peace” that Jordan and Egypt have with Israel, the two Gulf states are tightening their ties with Israel.

A few days after Bahrain signed the so-called Abraham Agreement at the White House, Israeli spy chiefs were visiting Manama (capital of the Arab country) and talking about intelligence cooperation with their common opponent, Iran.

So how do Israeli authorities feel about a potential future normalization with Saudi Arabia? They certainly watched Prince Bandar’s interview with interest, but have so far refused to comment.

Instead, a spokesman for the Israeli embassy in London said, “We hope that even more countries will recognize the new reality in the Middle East, joining us on the road to reconciliation.”

Saudi Arabia traditionally has acted slowly and with great caution when it comes to policy changes, testing every move before committing. But the arrival of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman changed all that.

Women can now drive, there is public entertainment and the country is slowly opening up to tourism.

Therefore, a Saudi-Israeli peace agreement, while not necessarily imminent, is now a real possibility.