Article by Thomas Friedman: Saudi Arabia is ready for normalization with Israel seventy percent of Saudis supported normalization before the Gaza war
The New York Times
I was concerned from the very beginning that Israel launched its invasion of Gaza to eliminate Hamas without any plan of what to do with the territory and its people in the wake of any victory. Having just spent a week in Saudi Arabia and the UAE to take the pulse of this important corner of the Arab world, I am now even more worried.
Let me summarize my concerns in this way: because Hamas has built an extensive tunnel network under Gaza, the Israeli forces, in their quest to eliminate that evil terrorist organization, have to destroy huge numbers of buildings. It is the only way they can kill so many Hamas fighters and disarm Gaza without losing so many of their soldiers in the short window that Israel feels in the face of pressure from the United States and other allies to end the invasion.
Israel was justified in responding to Hamas for breaking the ceasefire that was in place on October 7 and kidnapping about 240 more on its way that day. Hamas plotted and carried out a campaign of unspeakable barbarism that seemed designed to make Israel crazy and seek to destroy it without thinking the next morning. This is exactly what Israel has done.
But after nine weeks, we can now see morning after morning after morning. In pursuit of its goals of dismantling Hamas ' military machine and wiping out its top leaders, Israel has killed and injured thousands of innocent civilians in Gaza. Hamas knew this was going to happen and didn't care. Israel will inherit responsibility for a massive humanitarian catastrophe that will take years for a global coalition to repair and manage. As the Times reported on Tuesday, "satellite images show that the fighting has led to serious damage in almost every corner of Gaza City" - at least 6,000 buildings have been destroyed, with about a third of them in ruins.
A recent article on this topic in Haaretz by David Rosenberg noted that "even if the fighting ends with a decisive victory over Hamas, Israel will be burdened with a problem for which there is almost no solution. Most of the public discussion about what happens the day after the war has focused on who will rule Gaza. This alone is a complex question, but the problem is much deeper than who will be responsible for law and order and the provision of basic services: who is responsible will have to rebuild the wreckage that is Gaza and create a functioning economy, "he said.
This will be a multibillion-dollar endeavor for several years. And I can tell you based on my conversations here, no Gulf Arab countries (let alone the EU countries or the United States would do that. Congress will not come to Gaza with bags of money to rebuild it unless - and even this is not a sure thing - Israel has a legitimate and effective Palestinian partner and is committed to one day negotiating a two-state solution. Any Israeli official who says otherwise is delusional. "We need to see a viable plan for a two-state solution, a serious roadmap before we talk about the next day and rebuilding Gaza's infrastructure,"Lana Nusseibeh, the UAE Ambassador to the United Nations, said in an interview on Tuesday with the Wall Street Journal.
The most optimistic thing I can report from Riyadh, and from talking to American officials in Washington before my arrival, is that when the war in Gaza ends, Saudi Arabia remains committed in principle to resuming the negotiations that were underway before October 7th. What the negotiators were discussing was a grand bargain in which the United States would enter into a security treaty with Saudi Arabia, and at the same time, Saudi Arabia would normalize relations with Israel - provided that Israel commits to specific steps to work with the Palestinian Authority towards a two-state solution.
But I found a very strong impression here that the Saudis want the Americans to end the Gaza war as soon as possible, because death and destruction in Gaza are radicalizing its young population (who have largely not focused on Israel and Palestine before), while scaring foreign investors and generally hindering what Saudi Arabia wants to focus on: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's Vision 2030 plan to change the country, from education to infrastructure to women's empowerment.
While the leaders here are no less sympathetic to Hamas, and will not mourn the disappearance of the movement for a second, they doubt that Israel can wipe out Hamas forever and worry that in trying to do so, the damage done to Gaza will lead to unintended bad consequences.
Of course, I understand why it would be difficult to revive this Saudi - American-Israeli-Palestinian dialogue even for a moderate Israeli government to commit to it for the time being-not to mention the group of fanatics currently running Israel, committed to annexing the West Bank and the craziest looking to add Gaza. Given what happened on October 7, many Israelis do not even want to think, let alone agree to cede territorial control to any ruling Palestinian Authority.
But if Israel does not come up with a long-term political vision to entice the world to help IT finance the reconstruction of Gaza, it will suffer a lot of diplomatic and economic harm. Gaza could end up burdening Israel militarily, economically and morally - and its superpower patron takes the United States on the way.
Bibi Netanyahu is now campaigning to keep his job by trying to prove to his far-right base that he is the only leader willing to tell the Biden administration that his country will never do the minimum that the United States demands: that Israel help sponsor a functioning Palestinian Authority, and offer some long-term political horizon to the Palestinian state in order to develop a Palestinian partner who can one day rule Gaza liberated from Hamas and Israel.
That is why the readiness of Saudi Arabia - if it still intends - to move forward with the US-Saudi-Israeli-Palestinian dialogue when this war stops is very important. But this is not just charity work by the Saudis. This is a basic strategy. This generation of leaders in Saudi Arabia as well as in the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco (three countries that signed the Abraham accords with Israel) is completely unemotional when it comes to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Although he will not cope easily.
These leaders are tired of being told that they have to postpone their priorities and focus their energy, attention and resources on the Palestinian cause. At the same time, despite this, they are genuinely horrified by the civilian casualties in Gaza. At the same time, they are well aware of the corruption in the PA. At the same time, they hate such branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as Hamas and understand how its sympathizers throughout the region, with the help of a constantly angry Iran, are trying to use images of dead children in Gaza on television and social media to inflame the Arab population.
Western diplomats and Saudi officials pointed out to me how all these political crosswinds are howling today in nasty Arab battles raging on Arab social media about the issue of Palestine. This was especially true after Prince Mohammed, in an interview with Fox News in September, expressed his enthusiasm about normalizing relations with Israel if it would move towards a solution with the Palestinians. (I think this Saudi readiness was, in fact, a major reason for the Hamas attack in October. 7.)
For example, when Saudi Arabia went ahead on October 28 with its annual entertainment and sports festival known as the Riyadh season - featuring sports matches widely attended by prominent athletes and performances by Arab and international singers, dancers and other artists - pro-Palestine influencers on social media largely from Kuwait and Egypt began to criticize Saudis who chose entertainment while Gaza was burning. Contradictory publications of photos of cultural performances in Riyadh with Palestinians being shelled in Gaza began to spread, which upset the Saudis, many of whom are as angry about the death of so many civilians in Gaza as any other Arabs.
Daily Mail Australia reported that at a football World Cup qualifying match on November 21 in Kuwait between the Palestinian and Australian teams, Palestinian fans "staged a protest against Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip". In the seventh minute of the match, they raised Palestinian flags and waved Palestinian head scarves, kufiyat, "to celebrate the beginning of the war on October 7 - the date of the Hamas attack inside Israel".
One of the officials here explained to me that this protest, which started from the seventh minute, was not only a declaration of support for Hamas, but was also perceived as a hit in the Saudis. Portuguese football star Cristiano Ronaldo is now playing for the Saudi team Al-Nasr. Ronaldo is wearing number 7-and in the seventh minute, the Victory fans gave him a huge cheer.
Two weeks ago, Saudi Arabia hosted the second preliminary regatta of the XXXVII America's Cup at the Jeddah Yacht Club on the Red Sea coast, while Houthi Pirates from Yemen were attacking Israeli-owned ships in the same Red Sea and Houthi militiamen were firing rockets at Israel. While all this was happening above and on the ocean, an American friend of mine attending the boat race said that one of his Saudi hosts was attacking him about American support for the destruction of Gaza.
However: I was walking in Al Faisaliah Mall on Monday when a middle-aged shopkeeper who recognized me came out of the women's clothing store to say hello. He talked about all the business opportunities that were open in Saudi Arabia. Despite this, our conversation quickly turned to Gaza, and he wanted to make sure that I understood that many Saudis do not support Hamas, because the mass murder of civilians and the abduction of children in the war was expressly forbidden by the Prophet Muhammad and was carried out at the request of Iran.
The good news: a few months ago, the Saudi government conducted a special survey asking Saudis how they feel about normalization with Israel - if it is done in the context of Saudi support for the Palestinian state. A senior official told me with seventy percent support. The bad news: looking at the pictures coming from Gaza right now, the government would not dare to conduct this poll today.
