Saudi Arabia is taking small but inevitable steps towards normalising relations with Israel

After the collective gasp when the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain announced they would become the first Gulf states to normalise relations with Israel, there has been feverish speculation over whether Saudi Arabia, whose king is the Custodian of Islam’s holiest sites, and whose economy is the largest in the Arab world, would follow suit.

Donald Trump, who brokered the agreements, certainly thought so.

Saudi’s foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud publicly ruled that out before a comprehensive peace deal that the Palestinians would agree to.

But times and opinions are changing. What seemed like a fantastical impossibility in the past is perhaps now not a matter of if but when.

One clear indication of a shift was a recent interview on Saudi-owned channel Al-Arabiya of Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud, the former Saudi intelligence chief and long-term ambassador to Washington. 

A Goliath among Saudi’s diplomats and a key figure of the Saudi royal establishment, Prince Bander launched a scathing attack on Palestinian leaders over their reaction to the Gulf-Israel deals.

The usually fractured Palestinian leadership was united in their rejection of the agreements, calling them a “stab in the back” and a betrayal. The agreements did not guarantee an end to Israel’s annexation programme (which is illegal under international law) and appeared to go against the Saudi-forged Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, that normalisation with Israel is conditioned on a comprehensive peace deal that the Palestinians agree to and a full withdrawal of Israel to the 1967 borders.

Instead of agreeing with this, Prince Bandar spoke of the “failures” of the Palestinian leadership, saying they had repeatedly taken Saudi and Gulf support for granted – echoing words that top Emirati diplomats told me that the Gulf was “not a gift” for the Palestinians. 

“This low level of discourse is not what we expect from officials who seek to gain global support for their cause,” Prince Bandar said. “Their transgression against the Gulf states' leadership with this reprehensible discourse is entirely unacceptable.”

Prince Bandar then outlined several instances when the Palestinians let the Gulf down, recalling when Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat visited Saddam Hussein in 1990 after the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait.

“They have become convinced that there is no price to pay for any mistakes they commit towards the Saudi leadership or the Saudi state, or the Gulf leaderships and states,” he continued.

“I think the circumstances and times have changed,” he added pointedly.

This is not a unique opinion among citizens of the Kingdom.

Prominent Saudi political analyst Ali Shihabi said Prince Bandar’s comments reflect “an accumulated frustration” with the Palestinian leadership among Saudi people.

“The Palestinian Authority should listen to this very carefully and realise that with their behaviour they are risking the loss of their most consistent supporters which is the Saudi government,” he told me.

Many in the Gulf believe that the Palestinian leadership is “old and out of touch,” he added.

Prince Bandar’s interview was also not the first or only indication of change. Last month the Imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca urged Muslims to avoid “passionate emotions and fiery enthusiasm” towards Jewish people in a sermon broadcast by state television.

It marked a significant turn in tone for Abdulrahman al-Sudais who has in the past shed tears preaching about Palestine and prayed for Palestinians to have victory over the “invader and aggressor” Jews.

This sermon, instead, felt like the authorities were testing the water or perhaps planting a new idea.

Even how the Emirati and Bahraini deals could have come about is another sign.

Saudi experts agree that Bahrain would have needed to secure some kind of green light from its neighbour and benefactor Saudi Arabia to go ahead with the agreement with Israel.

The Kingdom has also helped the UAE with its deal by permitting Israeli aircraft to use Saudi airspace to allow flights between Israel and the UAE.  It allowed the first El Al flight to leave from Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi last month.

“Clearly Saudi Arabia is not obstructing,” said Aziz Alghashian, a Saudi expert on Saudi and Israeli relations at Essex University.

“It is actually facilitating these deals,” he added.

Alghashian traces a key sea-change in regional opinion during the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings which saw the rejection of the notion of pan-Arabism, which was very much anchored in the Palestinian cause for nationalism.

The aligning of Israel’s interests with many countries in the Gulf – over the shared enemy of Iran, and for some countries, the Muslim Brotherhood – has only changed opinions further.

But Alghashian believes that rather than a shared enemy being the clincher for Saudi Arabia, they may eventually normalise ties with Israel for financial and trade reasons, as the Kingdom, spearheaded by the young Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, tries to move away from an oil-based economy.

That said, Saudi Arabia, arguably the most powerful country in the Gulf, would loathe to be seen to be following in the footsteps of UAE and Bahrain.

The Kingdom, which presents itself as the leader of the Islamic world, has a role and responsibility that the other states arguably do not have. It would be much harder.

But as Prince Bandar made very clear, circumstances and times are changing. Saudi Arabia may not take this step any time soon but it does for the first time feel inevitable.