The statement the Saudi foreign ministry released a few hours after Hamas’s armed attack on Israel on 7 October unequivocally backed the Palestinians. While calling for an ‘immediate halt to the escalation between the two sides’, it added, ‘The kingdom recalls its repeated warnings of the dangers of the explosion of the situation as a result of the continued occupation, the deprivation of the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights, and the repetition of systematic provocations against its sanctities.’

True, Riyadh’s statement was less emphatic than the one from Hamas’s long-time financial backer Qatar, which was swift to call Israel ‘solely responsible for the ongoing escalation due to its continuous violations of the rights of the Palestinian people’. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), by contrast, condemned ‘attacks by Hamas against Israeli towns and villages near the Gaza Strip’ and said it was ‘appalled by reports that Israeli civilians have been abducted’.

Israel’s war on Hamas has collided head-on with Saudi Arabia and the US’s apparent ambition to open a more peaceful chapter in Middle Eastern history. After strained relations early in the Biden administration, followed by a chilly period when the Saudis cut oil production despite soaring energy prices, Riyadh and Washington had been in diplomatic overdrive since April, and there was a similar level of activity between the US and Israel. The goal was the normalisation of Saudi-Israeli relations. According to the negotiating parties, lifting this taboo was supposed to usher in an era of cooperation and avoid the region endlessly repeating the convulsions it has suffered since 1948.

Some commentators were quick to see the Hamas attack as an attempt to torpedo this rapprochement, a view that’s too simplistic to be wholly convincing. Nevertheless, the conflict has undoubtedly undermined the three-way initiatives of recent months. The US administration, which brought its full influence to bear to accelerate discussions over the summer, quickly expressed its desire to see them resume. But with Gaza coming under Israeli retaliatory bombardment and demonstrations in support of the Palestinians spreading across the Arab world and beyond, it would have been unthinkable for the Saudis to agree to keep talking. On 14 October two Saudi sources told Reuters that talks were on hold, although the monarchy did not officially confirm it. That same weekend, US secretary of state Antony Blinken made two visits to Riyadh on his whistle-stop tour of the Middle East to urge restraint from states in a region at risk of exploding.

Breakthrough was within reach

Like most countries in the Arab-Muslim world, Saudi Arabia has never recognised the existence of Israel – the exceptions are Egypt (1979), Jordan (1994), Mauritania (1999-2010), and, under the 2020 Abraham accords, Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco and Sudan (1). However, the recent intensification of diplomatic contact and comments made by the main players suggested a historic breakthrough was within reach, even if not imminent. ‘Every day, we get closer’ to an agreement that would be ‘the biggest historical deal since the end of the cold war,’ Saudi prime minster Muhammad Bin Salman (MBS) told the American channel Fox News on 20 September, in his first interview in English since his appointment as crown prince in 2017.

Two days later, Israel’s prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the UN General Assembly in New York that his country and the Saudis were on the cusp of ‘a dramatic breakthrough’. ‘Peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia will truly create a new Middle East,’ he said, prophesying the transformation of ‘lands once riven with conflict and chaos into fields of prosperity and peace’. John Kirby, spokesman for the US National Security Council, confirmed on 29 September that the parties had mapped out a ‘basic framework’.

The American press detailed the shape that this agreement was expected to take, particularly the demands Riyadh had made of Washington for establishing relations with Israel. Because, while all three parties stood to benefit from an agreement, the US was the keenest to pull it off. With the 2024 presidential campaign imminent, the Biden administration wanted a major foreign policy coup. Although it remained unspoken that Saudi Arabia might lead the entire Muslim world into normalising relations with Israel, from Washington’s perspective, Riyadh’s recognition would have been a much more decisive turning point in the Middle East than the Abraham accords signed under Donald Trump (2). And the US’s sponsorship would also allow it to reaffirm its influence in a region increasingly courted by China, which mediated a remarkable reconciliation between Iran and Saudi Arabia this March (3).

America’s impatience and pressure from its envoys to seal a deal in time for the next electoral cycle have had the effect of rehabilitating the troublemaker MBS as an essential dialogue partner and encouraged Riyadh to push its demands to the limit. Having apparently learned from his earlier mistakes (the war in Yemen, the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi), the crown prince dismissed his most hot-headed advisors and brought back some veterans of Saudi politics, such as Musaid al-Aiban, the national security advisor and a key player in the restoration of relations with Iran.

MBS has thrown everything into establishing his country as an influential state on a global scale, both politically and economically. Besides the rapprochement with Tehran, this reorientation has focused, in particular, on seeking a way out of the crisis in Yemen, an attempt to mediate in Sudan’s civil war and deploying the financial firepower of Saudi’s $700bn sovereign fund (the Public Investment Fund, PIF) on multiple fronts, both at home and abroad.

Conditions for normalisation

There was no question of MBS, who hates playing second fiddle, joining the Abraham accords midway. To countenance normalising relations with Tel Aviv, he needed a pact on the same scale as his ambitions. Before war erupted between Israel and Hamas, Riyadh had set out conditions in four categories, some of which appeared hard for the US Congress to swallow. The first was US support for a civilian nuclear programme based on enriching its own uranium resources, which Saudi Arabia, neck-and-neck with Russia as the world’s second-largest oil producer, regards as vital for its energy transition. Riyadh also wanted a security pact with Washington containing guarantees on a par with those of NATO membership. It also requested accelerated and almost unlimited access to the most sophisticated military equipment coming off American production lines, which have been put under pressure by the war in Ukraine.

Finally, the Saudis wanted concessions from Israel to ‘ease the lives of the Palestinians’, as MBS put it in his interview with Fox. By framing it so tersely, MBS, a proponent of transactional diplomacy, appeared to downgrade the Palestinian cause to economic aid, which would involve showering the West Bank with millions of petrodollars and securing concessions on travel restrictions and work permits for Palestinians. There was no mention of the Arab Peace Initiative, which Saudi’s King Abdullah presented at the Arab League summit in Beirut in 2002 during the second intifada. Under the slogan ‘land for peace’, it advocated normalising relations with Israel in exchange for a total withdrawal to the 4 June 1967 line and the creation of an independent Palestinian state (4).

Yet the late king’s plan remains very much the official Saudi line: the Saudi foreign ministry called on the parties to ‘advance peace … in accordance with the Arab Peace Initiative’ at the first rumblings of war. This conflict might also further enhance the international stature of the crown prince, whose growing power seems unhindered by his dire human rights record. According to Amnesty International, Saudi Arabia executed 196 prisoners in 2022, seven times more than in 2020. At least a hundred were executed between January and September 2023. But this no longer seems to deter the kingdom’s partners. In just a few months, MBS managed to smooth out his country’s differences with Iran, transform himself into a partner courted by the US, which had until recently regarded him with disdain, and initiate low-level relations with the old enemy, Israel. In September, two Israeli ministers visited Riyadh – a first.

While he may not yet be centre stage, MBS, at 38, is definitely no longer on the sidelines of a game which he’s quickly mastered. As for the ‘mega-deal’ sought by the US, only time will tell if it will ever happen. The Saudis, after all, are fond of saying ‘time is on our side.’