Since returning to the prime minister’s office in December, Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear that making peace with Riyadh is high on his agenda. By contrast, explains Robert Satloff, although diplomatic relations with Jerusalem are something the kingdom’s rulers desire, normalizing relations with Israel is not their priority. Satloff also notes that the Saudis no longer face some of the obstacles that might have existed in the past:
If Saudi leaders were concerned about popular blowback to normalization with Israel, recent indications suggest they have little to fear. A substantial proportion of Saudis—around two-fifths—tell pollsters they approve of open ties with Israel in business and sports, even without the umbrella of official relations. . . . . In recent months, Saudi receptivity to people-to-people contact has been tested by the hosting inside the kingdom of a wide variety of Israelis, from bankers to athletes.
With Saudi leaders expounding on potential normalization while omitting reference to historic demands for Israeli withdrawal and Palestinian statehood, there appears to be little “positive linkage” between Saudi-Israel ties and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, in the sense that Saudis—like the Emiratis in 2020—do not appear to be conditioning bilateral progress on breakthroughs on the Palestinian front. There is almost surely “negative linkage,” however, in the sense that Saudis—also like the Emiratis—will recoil at being used to distract from Israeli behavior toward Palestinians they view as objectionable.
Nor does Satloff see détente between Riyadh and Tehran as an obstacle to building ties with Jerusalem. Moreover, he argues, “the Saudis have much to gain from peace with Israel.” At the same time, the kingdom is in the midst of a major social and economic transformation initiated by Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. The prince no doubt is considering relations with the Jewish state in light of this program of reform:
Normalization with Israel, in the sense of a major, public breakthrough toward peace, should be seen as part of a larger question regarding the right order in which to pursue big changes. While there is general consensus among well-informed Saudis that building normal, peaceful, mutually beneficial relations with Israel is a question of when, not if, it is not readily apparent that normalization is as critical to the transformation process as some of these other major reforms.
Put differently, it is not clear that the marginal benefits of normalization—defined as the value of the advantages that Saudi Arabia does not already enjoy from its quiet, tacit cooperation with Israel minus the sociocultural strains on the Saudi leadership from explaining publicly why it shifted policy on this issue—outweigh the marginal benefits of, say, becoming a regional hub of global business (which will likely require easing the ban on non-Muslim prayer) or becoming a destination on the global tourism map (which will likely require easing the ban on alcohol consumption).
Read more on Washington Institute for Near East Policy: https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/saudi-normalization-israel-domestic-transformation-and-us-policy