While Israel-Saudi normalisation will bring a long-standing divide to an end on paper, in practice, a full gambit of regional situations will need to be gamed by all involved
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The buzz around a real possibility of political normalisation between Israel and Saudi Arabia has been growing at a rapid pace. In a rare interview with American network Fox News, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) spoke on the normalisation of ties with traditional regional foe, Israel, and said that talks for the first time seemed ‘real and serious’. His contemporary, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is the keener of the two to cement this normalisation of relations—wants another major feather in his already contentious but illustrious political legacy. Seeds of this thaw in the recent past can also be traced back to India. In March 2018, an Air India Boeing 787 ‘Dreamliner’ flew the inaugural flight between New Delhi and Tel Aviv, using Saudi Arabia’s airspace. This was a result of diplomacy by all three states, bound together by India’s positioning as an increasingly important and neutral power. At that time, as the now popular air route was launched, many questions were asked, such as what would happen to Israeli citizens on board if said aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing on Saudi soil considering both do not recognise each other’s existence. Now, five years later, such concerns are not tabled anymore.
The United States (US), often seen as a superpower in decline as far as its role and presence in West Asia are concerned, is at the fulcrum of these diplomatic movements.
Some of this rapprochement has already begun in public. On 26 September, Israel’s Tourism Minister Haim Katz arrived in the kingdom as part of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation, making him the first-ever Israeli minister to do so. Both countries have had years of back-door diplomacy, which is now starting to be done more openly. The United States (US), often seen as a superpower in decline as far as its role and presence in West Asia are concerned, is at the fulcrum of these diplomatic movements. For US President Joe Biden, diplomatic normalcy between the Saudis and Israelis is a much sought-after foreign policy victory as he enters what is expected to be a hotly contested election year. Furthermore, if China rode the wave of managing a détente between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the US wants an equitable event to its name. From a geopolitical point of view, such a thaw will re-draw regional fault lines significantly. For the US, its security apparatus will be re-oriented from the perspective of a duopoly. This would mean that its security architecture will not necessarily be designed from the point of view of looking at Israel and Saudi Arabia as adversaries. Instead, it could be re-modelled in a more hyphenated format, as Israel–Saudi against a common strategic goal of containment of Iranian influence in this region and beyond, as Tehran gets more intertwined with Moscow and Beijing. However, the geopolitics of hyphenated approaches does not have a very successful history. For a long time, the West approached India and Pakistan from a similar construct, with self-defeating results. One change in thinking that seems to be seeping in is that the very concept of alliances and partnerships feeding into security architectures is not safe enough. While alliances are a whole different ball game, partnerships over security issues are also feeling the pinch. As a result, the Saudis have a gambit of demands attached to the idea of normalising ties with Israel. In essence, it’s a geostrategic play, hedging multiple risks in return for unprecedented security guarantees and access to technologies, more specifically, a nuclear programme. All this, in exchange for no exclusivity for the US, as Riyadh increases engagements with the likes of China and Russia as well. This is also why some quarters of Washington, DC feel uneasy about the pace at which these events are unfolding.
Normalisation of relations with Israel by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain did not lead to any major mass movements both within those countries or against them in the region.
However, the euphoria around the above expectations also raises many questions. While both MbS and Netanyahu use the media to portray a ‘sooner-than-later’ timeline, both states have constituencies that would fundamentally oppose this move. For the Saudis, home of the Two Holy Mosques, normalising ties will have a revibrating effect. The Palestine issue has been at the crux of many movements within the Arab and the Islamic worlds globally, acting as an anchor of sorts towards a pan-Islamic narrative. Despite MbS’s popularity amongst the kingdom’s youth, largely built on opening up the country to global economics and attracting big brands and sports stars, ideological challenges have a different connotation to them that can go much deeper than national and personal economic prosperity. From this aspect, signing of the Abraham Accords was seen as a successful experiment. Normalisation of relations with Israel by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain did not lead to any major mass movements both within those countries or against them in the region. However, while public sentiment was muted, it was not monolithically in favour of it. A public pushback of some kind cannot be completely dismissed. Furthermore, normalisation could launch a new era of mobilisation for radical Islamist groups that have been suppressed but remain both present and persistent. Venues such as Afghanistan under the Taliban and a backsliding Sahel region can become incubators of such extremist groups, making this troika—Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the US—a target of attacks since terror groups are well aware that all these states and leaderships over time can be defeated as evidenced by Kabul.
The idea that Netanyahu can agree to a deal that allows Saudis to enrich their own uranium, for example, is already causing significant unease in the country’s Opposition, which concerns are also feeding into powerful quarters of American polity.
Now, the question is, what kind of reaction would MbS face if normalisation with Israel indeed takes place? One option for the Saudis would be to extract over-arching concessions from Israel when it comes to the Palestinian cause and geography alike, while also leaving enough room for future gains in a staggered manner to reach an eventual sweet spot. This, of course, relies on whether Netanyahu continues to lead a delicate coalition government with a significant influence of the far-right, and whether it has the bandwidth to make such offers. The idea that Netanyahu can agree to a deal that allows Saudis to enrich their own uranium, for example, is already causing significant unease in the country’s Opposition, which concerns are also feeding into powerful quarters of American polity. Many questions remain afloat on the aftereffects of these geopolitical endeavours. While this will indeed bring a long-standing divide to an end on paper, in practice, a full gambit of regional situations will need to be gamed by all involved to ensure the longevity of the deal. Normalisation will indeed be good for economic designs and trans-national ideations such as the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) project that was announced recently at the G20 Summit in New Delhi, but expecting it to end underlying tensions and fundamental ideological, theological, and even geostrategic fault lines may be demanding too much for the time being. Strong fundamentals, the engagement mechanisms and longevity of such deals should trump short-term political victories.
Kabir Taneja is a Fellow with the Strategic Studies programme at Observer Research Foundation.
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Kabir Taneja is a Fellow with Strategic Studies programme. His research focuses on Indias relations with West Asia specifically looking at the domestic political dynamics ...
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