by Dr. Edy Cohen
Israelis should exercise caution before they read too much into this relationship.
Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman al Saud, photo via Office of the President of Russia
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 899, July 20, 2018
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Ties between Saudi
Arabia and Israel have reached new heights in the past two years,
culminating in a recent report that a meeting had taken place between
Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israelis should exercise caution, however, before they read too much
into this relationship. Riyadh continues to foment hatred of Israel at
home.
Saudi Arabia and Israel do not maintain official
relations, but by the time Crown Prince Abdullah published the 2002 Arab
Peace Initiative, bilateral ties between the two countries had already
been established behind the scenes. In 2015, ties increased and some
were even made formal as a result of the joint effort by both countries
against the Iranian nuclear program. Saudis visited Israel and there
were reports that the late Mossad chief Meir Dagan visited Saudi Arabia
to coordinate on the Iran issue. Over the past two years, ties have
reportedly reached new highs, with Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman
allegedly holding a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
If there was once talk of a moderate Sunni
alliance against Iran, this term has lost all meaning in the last two
years. The Middle East is now divided into two camps: one made up of
Turkey, Qatar, Iran, and Sudan, and the other made up of Saudi Arabia,
the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt. The latter camp, which has
the support of the US and Israel, imposed the boycott on Qatar over its growing ties to Iran and Turkey.
There can be no doubt that the growing ties
between Riyadh and Jerusalem are a result of the hostility between Iran
and Saudi Arabia. Tehran is aggressive in its attacks on Riyadh,
including in the cyber arena. In 2012, a cyberattack on Saudi Arabia’s
national petroleum and gas company Aramco caused unprecedented damage,
partially wiping or in some cases completely destroying some 35,000 of
its computers. There have also been reports of Iranian hackers breaking
into the bank accounts of Saudi princes to reveal how much money they
have at their disposal.
Faced with these threats, Riyadh established the
National Cyber Security Authority to fight Iran and the hackers. In
2017, the authority was tasked with an additional goal – inciting the
Arab world against Qatar. Abdullah adviser Saud bin Abdullah al-Qahtani
is responsible for the unit, which, according to assessments, employs
some 4,000 people.
The National Cyber Security Authority’s Twitter
account has 400,000 followers. Employees operate online under false
identities, and their job is to create hashtags that trend online. Their
brief is to moderate and control public opinion and to vilify Qatar and
its leaders.
The agency’s Twitter account tweets daily, mostly
against Qatar and Iran. It uses anti-Semitic terminology, referring to
Qatar as “Qatariel,” a portmanteau of Qatar and Israel, and claiming the
Al-Jazeera network “belongs to the Israeli Mossad.”
“The deal of the century” is a Qatari scheme to
sell Palestine to the “Zionist entity,” one tweet reads, while another
alleges that the “Zionist” Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the father of
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, is scheming to divide the Arab states
to fulfill the dreams of the “Zionist entity” and Iran. In another
tweet, the authority alleges Qatar is “trying to destroy the Arab world
to serve the enemies of the Muslim world: Israel and Iran.” These
statements penetrate deep into the Arab consciousness and increase their
existing hatred towards Jews and Israel.
The Saudis are thus playing a double game. Behind
the scenes, they send the Israelis the message that Tehran is a common
enemy and goad it to fight Iran and Hezbollah. At home, however, they
say that the enemy is first and foremost the State of Israel, followed
by Iran. Their formula is clear: covert ties with Israel coupled with
overt hostility to the Jewish state to satisfy the people, a majority of
whom hate Israel.
The Saudi double game is sadly familiar. It is
reminiscent of the Egyptian model under Egyptian Presidents Gamal Abdel
Nasser and Hosni Mubarak: dozens of anti-Semitic articles were published
on a daily basis, but the Israeli audience was not exposed to the
phenomenon and the politicians closed their eyes. In the two-and-a-half
decades since the onset of the Oslo “peace process,” successive Israeli
governments have similarly turned a deaf ear to the vitriolic
Palestinian incitement that has indoctrinated the residents of the West
Bank and Gaza with implacable hatred for Israel and helped pave the road
for the BDS movement. Jerusalem must not accept anti-Israel incitement,
and that is also true where Saudi Arabia is concerned. Incitement
translates into action, and that action comes at a deadly price.
This is an edited version of an article that appeared in Israel Hayom on July 17, 2018.
BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family
Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/saudi-arabia-israel-enemies/
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