4th of 6 parts
Israel
In principle and in policy, Saudi Arabia is committed to the destruction of the Jewish State of Israel, considering its establishment both illegal and illegitimate. King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, as the kingdom's founder, provided the requisite dogmatic Wahhabi statement to the British Political Representative in Kuwait on November 23, 1937: "Our hatred for the Jews dates from God's condemnation of them for their persecution and rejection of Jesus Christ and their subsequent rejection of His chosen Prophet [Muhammad]." King Fahd, his son, called for jihad in 1986 against Israel in order "to recover Islamic Palestine" and realize "the return of Palestinian rights".14 A Wahhabi preacher in the mosque of Medina, Sheikh Salah Bin-Muhammad al-Budayr, prayed to Allah in 2002 that He "defeat the usurper Jews...shake the land under their feet, instill fear in their hearts, and make them booty for Muslims...O God, destroy them. O God, scatter them. O God, annihilate them soon. O God, have mercy on our brothers and sisters in Palestine".15
While Saudi preachers and teachers poured venom on the Jews, and approved of suicide-bombing attacks within Israel, Prince Abdullah – later King – posed as the Arab conciliator and mediator by presenting peace initiatives, as in 1982. He called for a complete Israel withdrawal and Palestinian refugee return. These steps would, however, fulfill the strategic conditions for Israel to be overrun from the outside or collapse from within.
The true Saudi objectives have never been concealed, though obfuscated by diplomatic flurry and Arabian dust thrown in the eyes of bewildered politicians. Advocacy support for the Palestinian struggle has been consistent throughout recent history. In 1973 Saudi intervention with Lebanese politicians saved the armed Palestinian organizations in the refugee camps of Tyre, Sidon, and Beirut from Lebanese army forces. In 1974 the Saudis appointed Yasser Arafat as the vice-president of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, with the PLO attending as a full member. Thereafter, the Arab League recognized the PLO as the sole, legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, followed in November of 1974 by United Nations' recognition of the PLO. The following year, Israel was condemned in the UN General Assembly vote for the "Zionism is Racism" resolution.
Perhaps yet more politically specific was the Fahd Plan from 1981-1982 that promoted the political terminology of a "Palestinian state" as a just solution to the conflict with Israel, while cajoling the United States to begin a dialogue with the PLO. The Saudis' deceitful moderation, always ambiguous, was politically upgraded two decades later when in 2002 Saudi Prince Bandar, the ambassador to Washington, persuaded President Bush to call for "the two state solution" – Palestine alongside Israel – as America's foreign policy in the Middle East. Bush's subsequent "Road Map" was of Saudi political vintage. Sacrificing Israel on the altar of a false peace conflates American interests with Saudi goals. It has been Saudi Arabia's standard historic policy to persuade Washington that the core of Middle East instability – be it in Lebanon, Iraq, or elsewhere – is the Israeli-Palestinian dilemma and the absence of a full solution to the "Palestinian problem".
While the royal House of Saud posed as a positive force for peace-making, true Saudi aspirations were never actually hidden. In August 2003, Sheikh Salih al-Talib in the mosque of Mecca called for "destroying the haughtiness of Jews" while "filling the world with justice". The elimination of Israel would enact the Saudi script on both points. After 1967, with Israel's astounding military victory against three Arab states, Saudi money was provided to Palestinian fedayeen operating against Israel from bases located in Jordanian territory. From the 1970s, a Saudi grant of $40 million annually – some claim $100 million – reached PLO coffers.16 Although this generosity was considered protection money to assure that Palestinian terrorism bypass the kingdom, it did after all fund incessant Palestinian terrorism against Jews and Israel. This generosity was later replicated for Hamas, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and Palestine's "Islamic Resistance Movement", founded in 1988. Hamas proclaims "holy war" as the method to liberate Palestine, indoctrinating future martyrs from kindergarten, and sending men and women relentlessly on suicide missions against Israel. Saudi financial support for Hamas began from its early days in Gaza; in 1998 its leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was welcomed in the kingdom, provided medical treatment and a gift of $25 million. Prince Abdullah, the future king of the kingdom, then visited him in the hospital.
With the outbreak of the Intifada al-Aqsa in October 2000, Saudi support for Hamas increased for the organization itself and the families of sacred martyrs (shahids). One report claimed that during an 18-month period from the beginning of the intifada until April 2002, the Saudis provided Islamic groups and the Palestinian Authority with a total of $500 million – to Arafat personally and the Hamas movement.17
In 2002, Khalid Mashal, heading the movement's political bureau in Damascus, visited Riyadh. The government-controlled Saudi press typically praised Palestinian suicide-bombers, like Abd al-Baset Oudeh who blow himself up in an Israeli hotel in Netanya in April 2002, killing 29 Jewish Passover holiday guests.18
In 2003, 60% of Hamas' budget came from Saudi Arabia. Back in 1995, we recall, the United States had listed Hamas as a terrorist organization.
In January 2006, Hamas won a majority of the seats in the Palestinian elections and formed the government under Ismail Haniya. Firing of "Qassam" rockets at the Israeli town of Sderot and other western Negev communities continued as before despite Israel's withdrawal from the Gush Katif settlement communities in the Gaza area. Later that year, on November 13, it was reported that the spokesman of Hamas, Mushir al-Masri, carried $2 million he received in Saudi Arabia across the border at Rafah into the Gaza Strip.
But Saudi support for the Palestinians was more than financial and terrorist-oriented there was also Saudi diplomatic support for Western recognition of the PLO and Palestinian national rights that fit the kingdom's smooth image, business contacts, and international propriety and clout. As the Saudi-Palestinian connection was always strong, it was perfectly fitting that when PLO terrorists kidnapped and murdered American diplomats in the Saudi embassy in Khartoum in March 1973, the Saudi ambassador was not harmed. The later European recognition of the PLO, as by the European Community in June 1980, was very much a Saudi achievement. American recognition of the PLO in late 1988 should be considered in the same light. And all along, Saudi money flowed into Arafat's pockets: In 1982, prior to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in June, the Saudis gave the PLO $250 million to purchase Soviet-bloc weapons.
A central model-message and legacy of Muhammad the Prophet of Islam was his seventh-century fierce warfare and massacre of Jews in Arabia and their subsequent expulsion from the peninsula. Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam, has assumed its sacred responsibility to support Muslim warfare against the Jews – the "most hostile to the believers" according to the Qur`an – and bring about their expulsion from Israel. In a grand diplomatic gesture on behalf of the Palestinians, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia hosted delegations from the PLO and from Hamas in Mecca in February 2007, to work out an agreement between these groups, toward a National Unity Government for the Palestinian Authority. The Saudi patron of the Palestinians and their campaign against Israel demonstrated its high-profile authority in regional politics, with international attention focused on the event.
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