In the first week of December—when the Arab world was expected to explode with rage over the American shift in policy regarding Israel’s capital—Robert Satloff was heading a delegation of scholars and policy experts on a visit to Riyadh. He and his colleagues heard speeches and statements by a number of prominent Saudi figures—none of whom, however, commented about the most recent development. Take, for instance, the head of the Muslim World League (MWL):
For decades, [the MWL] has been notorious for propagating an extreme version of Islam—funding schools, mosques, and other religious institutions that have served as incubators for Sunni jihadists. Surely, its head would denounce America’s assault on the sanctity of Muslim control of Jerusalem.
To my amazement, the relatively new MWL head, Muhammad al-Issa, had a very different message. Mention of Jerusalem never passed his lips. Instead, he noted with pride the friendships he has built with rabbis in Europe and America, the visit he recently made to a synagogue in Paris, and the interfaith dialogue to which he said he was now committed.
As for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Satloff found him, on the day following the White House’s Jerusalem announcement, with much to say about a variety of subjects, and eager to converse with his visitors. But he mentioned Jerusalem only when pressed, cursorily acknowledged his dissatisfaction with President Trump’s decision, and then changed the subject. Satloff comments:
On a day widely characterized as one of the darkest for U.S. relations with the Arab world in decades, Mohammed bin Salman offered a very different vision for both the Saudi-American relationship and the potential for Saudi-Israeli partnership. On the former, he repeatedly affirmed the strength of the security partnership, which he proudly noted was the oldest in the region—even older than the one between the United States and Israel. And on Israel itself, he struck an unusually positive note. Unlike what I heard from Saudi leaders on past visits, he said nothing about Israeli expansionism, Israeli arrogance, Israeli unfairness, or Israeli encroachment on Muslim rights in Jerusalem. Instead, he spoke of the promising future that awaited Saudi-Israeli relations once peace was reached, and, operationally, he committed himself to bringing that about. . . .
Was Mohammed bin Salman merely delivering what his audience wanted to hear? Perhaps. Our delegation was certainly electrified by his engaging personality and what he had to say. We were especially impressed by his pursuit of a “moderate Islam” and his claim to have dramatically shrunk the number of extremists in Saudi religious institutions. He offered specific percentages of how bad the problem was two years ago and how much smaller he expects it to be three years from now; to my ears, this amounted to a stark admission of Saudi responsibility for religious fanaticism and a powerful sign of their commitment to change.
Admittedly, some of his rhetoric sounded too good to be true. . . . But if Mohammed bin Salman did say what we wanted to hear, so what? The opposite could just have easily been the case—namely, that he could have used the occasion to send a piercing message through us to American leaders and to friends of the U.S.-Israel relationship about the high costs of recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. He didn’t, and that matters a great deal.
More about: Israel & Zionism, Israel-Arab relations, Saudi Arabia, U.S. Foreign policy
