Why Hamas wanted to destroy hopes for bringing Saudi Arabia closer to Israel
WORLDVIEW: GEOPOLITICS
On 6 October, there were signs that Saudi Arabia was close to recognising the state of Israel and forging diplomatic relations. The events of 7 October, when Hamas attacked Israel, put that on hold. However, the subtext of the conflict means Saudi Arabia may re-engage in negotiations when Riyadh deems the time is right.
Hamas is bankrolled and armed by the country that’s both Saudi Arabia’s and Israel’s biggest regional rival: Iran. Tehran fears a Saudi–Israel deal as it would strengthen both countries economically and militarily. We can’t say with certainty that Iran encouraged the Hamas attack, but the carnage it has caused suits the Iranians, and it’s unlikely Hamas would have acted without telling Tehran in advance.
A Saudi–Israel normalisation had been coming for years. The US government is trying to bring them together for several reasons: to give President Joe Biden a foreign policy success in an election year, to potentially allow a drawdown of US power in the Middle East and to further the creation of the India Middle East Corridor (IMEC), which was announced at September’s G20 meeting.
Biden needs a boost and a Saudi–Israel agreement would be quite a breakthrough. The wider aim is to ensure that the USA has partners on which it can rely to ‘police’ the Middle East and limit how close those partners move towards China.
This brings us to the IMEC, which, despite sounding like a cinema multiplex, might be what Biden called it: ‘a big deal’. The USA, Canada, most of Western Europe, Australia, India, Israel, Japan and Jordan have agreed to build what would be a rival to China’s Belt and Road – an economic transit corridor totalling 5,000 kilometres. It would link India to the Arabian Gulf by sea, then go from Saudi Arabia and the UAE through Jordan to the Israeli port of Haifa (either via or around the Palestinian West Bank) and onwards to ports in Europe.
Israel and Saudi Arabia have been privately cooperating for years, partially driven by a shared anxiety over Iran, but an official normalisation of relations would open up military, technology, infrastructure and tourism opportunities for both. The Americans and Israelis might have to accept that Riyadh could enrich a small amount of uranium for civilian energy under strict supervision. The Saudis want a binding commitment from the USA that it would come to its defence if attacked. The USA prefers vaguer language.
To allow the Saudis to justify normalisation, Israel would have to transfer a significant chunk of the West Bank’s Area C to the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and promise to halt the expansion of Jewish settlements. The PA would commit to holding democratic elections and enhance the security relationship it has with Israel. Theoretically, this could kickstart negotiations about a ‘two-state solution’ with East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. If successful, the Saudis would bankroll the building of the Palestinian state.
Timing is everything and now seems not to be the time. Even when emotions have cooled, there will still be major hurdles to cross to reach a diplomatic agreement. Israel’s coalition government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, contains ultra-nationalists from the Jewish Home Party and the Religious Zionist Party. They plan to increase the number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank by 500,000 and have given legal status to several settler outposts previously declared illegal under Israeli law. One of the ultra-nationalists, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, is on record saying he wants the borders of Israel to stretch to the Jordan River.
Netanyahu only survives as prime minister with their support. If handing over part of the West Bank to the PA is part of a deal with Saudi Arabia, the ultra-nationalists would collapse the government. So Netanyahu may have an incredibly difficult decision to make. He can try to achieve an historic peace breakthrough by agreeing concessions to the Palestinians and Saudis, and then hope to put together a government of national unity to get the deal through the Knesset. Or he could take a hard line in negotiations, collapse the peace process and stay in power.
The latter would probably accelerate settlement building in the West Bank and extinguish the already dying embers of a two-state solution. At some point, the West Bank would then be engulfed in violence. That, in turn, would inflame the Arab world and endanger the Abraham Accords under which the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan normalised relations with Israel.
Wrecking peace is much easier than building it. As we see yet again.
