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MBS is a pragmatist like his forefathers. Chesnot/Getty Images
The 1945 meeting between American President Franklin Roosevelt and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz, which laid the foundation for their nations’ enduring relationship, is often portrayed as an exchange of oil for security cooperation. But in reality, oil was hardly discussed. The conversation aboard the USS Quincy, afloat in the Suez Canal, focused on Palestine.
President Roosevelt told King Abdulaziz how the Jews of Europe had suffered indescribable horrors at the hands of the Nazis: eviction from their homes, destruction of their property, torture of their families, and mass murder. Could the king help with their resettlement?
The king replied that the Jews and their descendants should be given the best “lands, flocks and wells” of the Germans who had oppressed them. When the President said that the Jews did not trust the Germans and had no desire to stay in Germany, Abdulaziz replied that if the Allies did not think they could control the Germans, then why had they fought such a costly war? Certainly, he would never leave a defeated enemy in a position to strike back in the future.
When the President tried again, he received a similar reply: “Amends should be made by the criminal, not by the innocent bystander. What injury have the Arabs done to the Jews of Europe? It is the Christian Germans who stole their homes and lives. Let the Germans pay.” Had Roosevelt not dropped the issue, the meeting might well have ended acrimoniously.
Today, the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the Jewish people has once again come under scrutiny. A historic peace deal between Saudi and Israel has been put on hold since the outbreak of war in Gaza. And the week before last, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) called for an “immediate halt to Israeli military operations in Gaza”.
Yet Saudi leaders have always been pragmatists. Two years after the meeting on the USS Quincy, King Abdulaziz’s son, the future King Faisal, led the Saudi delegation to the United Nations, where he tried to prevent the partition of Palestine. He failed, and the United States successfully mobilised support for partition. But although King Abdulaziz was angry and disappointed by Washington’s recognition of Israel, he never threatened the American air base or oil concessions in Saudi Arabia. He placed too great a value on promoting regional stability and maintaining strong relations with the US to risk a diplomatic confrontation.
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SubscribeHamas needs to be squished. Full stop. There’s my detailed and thoughtful take for the day! 😉
Not that I’d disagree, but that would give only temporary relief. It will need to stay squished, to get anything like a peace. That requires some other organisation with the legitimacy and power to suppress it, and its successors. It also requires giving the Palestinians some conditions where they can reasonably look forward to a better future instead of staying mired in misery and dreaming of getting their own back. It will be hard enough regardless, but unless you go for perpetual war or full-on ethnic cleansing you will need carrots as well as sticks.
I suggest not electing bloodthirsty religious fascists next time an election is held.
Your comment is a bit ambiguous. Are you referring to Hamas or Netanyahu and his coalition partners?
Are you referring to Netanyahu’s handling of Israel’s response to the terror attacks of 7 October? What would you have Israel do? Suffer in silence? Flee the Middle East? Or, most improbably of all, fight a “nice” war with no civilian casualties and where Hamas don’t use human shields?
Unfair. Even if you back Israel’s response (and I do, more or less, faute de mieux) ‘bloodthirsty religious fascists’ could well refer to some of Netanyahu’s coalitions partners.
Yes, but at least there’ll be lots of elections that could have them removed from power. Hamas and the PA on the other hand….
No, it cannot. Because while they may be extreme, they have not launched an attack or invasion of Gaza or Palestinian areas.
No I am talking about the religious zealots and their behaviour in the West Bank
I would have had Israel defend the attack in real time, rather than after the event. The impression conveyed was that on 7 October, the IDF was down the pub for a long lunch.
A solution would start with the dismantling of UNWRA and the resettlement of refugees. After 75 years it is high time that the third generation of Palestinians born to the refugees of 1948 be freed from their misery of perpetual victimhood and be offered better lives. That and an uncompromising war against the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaida, ISIS and their murderous offshoots.
How?
How, which part?
If a real effort were made by the UN to resettle the descendants of the 1948 refugees instead of playing along with the effort to make the problem intractable, the Palestinian refugees could start getting on with their much better lives. Like the millions of other refugees from other conflicts around the world.
As for the uncompromising war: by killing and destroying them wherever they sprout up.
Many of them are so indoctrinated into that way of thinking, that they won’t go. They know if they step out of it, that it is gone.
And the Arab world doesn’t have a whole lot of cultural accretions aside from its faith, and the places it emerged.
That faith allows no quarter for the arts, music, painting, sculpture, civil governance, non-religious philosophy . . . and knows no fine sausage nor drafts of wine.
Although, I’d make the offer to leave as enticing as possible in order to see what % stay.
Hm, ‘resettle’. Neither Egypt nor Jordan want Palestinian refugees and the West certainly doesn’t want them. Just check out Emil Kirkegaard’s post on Demark’s experience of taking in Palestinians. So which lucky country would you like to foist them on?
The USA off course , ‘they’ would feel perfectly at home in the Rogue State.
Somewhere in the far north and incredibly cold should be the preferred choice.
Perhaps Santa could use them as elves?
I heard that Scotland and Australia are prepared to take some in. Their Arab brothers don’t want them. Maybe Erdogan will host them.
I read somewhere that one third of U.N. workers are in Palestine. Not a lot of incentive to change anything.
I so agree – but how are you going to do it? You could surely improve a lot of lives in situ by abandoning the blockade of Gaza and letting them improve their lives there, but since that would likely lead to greatly increased attacks from Hamas it is probably not a good idea.
Where would you resettle them, then? I seem to remember that when the PLO was in Jordan they were well on the way to taking over the country in a coup, so King Hussein had to start a civil war – Black September – and ask Israel (of all countries) for help before he kicked the PLO out. Jordan says it does not want them – and quite likely dare not take them.
Egypt does not seem to want several million aggrieved and militant Palestinians either. They are probably seen as a serious threat to the stability of the regime, never mind that the Egyptians people might well see it as a betrayal, helping Israel evict their fellow Muslims. Europe does not want any immigrants, and surely not millions of militant Muslims. And I suspect that the Palestinians themselves – like the Jews before them – would not see a national home in Uganda or Montana as a worthy substitute for staying in Palestine. I am all for peace, but it is really, really hard to envision any solution that would actually work once you look at the details
I agree but getting rid of Hamas may change the dynamic
The refugees of the late 40s in every part of the world, or rather their 3rd generation descendants have long since been resettled. This includes the Indian subcontinent and Europe, both with millions of refugees.
The desire to resettle the distant descendants of Palestinian refugees is a veiled attempt to swamp Israel with hostile migrants.
Today I read a Substack post suggesting that a 3-state solution (Israel, Gaza and the West Bank) offers the best long-term strategy. He convinced me.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/a-three-state-solution-is-the-only
Thanks. That was well-argued and reasonably realistic, including about the problems it would entail. The hardest bit would probably be how to convince Israel to let go of its stranglehold on Palestinian territories and force its settlers off their current lands, when the short term effect is quite likely to give them a couple of more wars with well-prepared Palestinian enemies before the conflict freezes.
Regrettably ethnic cleansing has actually been the only solution that brought peace to some otherwise intractable wars: East Prussia, the Sudetenland, Croatia v. Serbia, Turkey v. Greece, Turkey v. Armenia, Spain v. Islam,…
Pipe dreams unfortunately for the same reason as two state solution is unrealistic. The nation state status will only allow Palestinians to accumulate more and deadlier weapons. It’ll all the same but much worse. It’s the question of Palestinian identity not of economy or political settlement. People will readily die for it
Quite likely it would not work, but then, maybe this problem just cannot be solved. At least the author is realistic about a lot of the problems. He is saying that:
– Palestinians will never be happy with less than getting all of their land back, for themselves alone, and will never concede that the Jews have a right to be here. They will not even say that they abandon their ‘right of return’, let alone mean it.
– Palestinians will not accept being assimilated or subjugated by Egypt or any other Arab country, and the countries in question will not take on the thankless and violent job of trying.
– Palestinians and Jews will never start feeling like one people, and so cannot share one state.
For a stable, peaceful result, you would need both sides to have some kind of state and good enough lives that they have something to lose from going to war – which they do not have now. AND you would need them to accept that the chances of getting everything they want are too low to be worth the risk. Arguably that is the kind of thing that keeps peace between Greece and Turkey, nowadays.
Given all that, his ‘three-state solution’ would give the Palestinians something to lose, without requiring that they admit to themselves or anyone else that they have lost and are never going to get the old land back. The idea is that eventually they give up continuous war as too costly. It could be stable – the problem is how you got there. It would require Israel to accept that they would be under permanent threat, just one lost war away from catastrophe and one intelligence failure away from a massacre. It would require patiently fighting ever more wars till the Palestinians grew tired of it, while leaving the Palestinian nations independent and relatively prosperous – and so the better able to fight. And it would require Israel to give up on its own claims to all the land and use its army against the hundreds of thousands of settlers in what could well amount to a civil war.
So, yes, it might work in the long term. But if I was Israeli I would probably consider an alternative. If the Palestinians will give nothing in return for all those Israeli concessions, if they will hate you and fight you no matter what you do, and the only way to stop them is to keep fighting until they finally tire and allows the war to freeze. Well, how much worse would it be for Israel if they evicted the Palestinians from all of the land and at least fought the inevitable wars from within better borders?
Excellent dissection of the issues surrounding the concept of the hallowed two (or three, now) state solution.
Nice plan in theory, but Gaza isn’t presently viable as a stand-alone country. I mean, doesn’t its water and electricity come from Israel?
What conditions do you have in mind?
Fairly vague ones. As a faraway European with no skin in the game I should not presume to be an expert. But since you ask:
For now the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank both seem to be living more or less under Israeli control, with no way to take control of their own destiny, no promise of economic development, and a lot of irremediable poverty. If you are a Palestinian and want to do something active to make a better future for your children and the people around you – what do you do, exactly? Where do you put your energies? It is hard to convince people to stop yearning for the right of return and make something of themselves instead, if they live in miserable conditions with no prospect of improving things. So, prosperity, open borders, control of their own lives and state, a situation where making a success of your family and your country is actually a realistic goal. How many Palestinians would be tempted by this possibility if it meant giving up their claim to the right of return I would not pretend to know. But as long as you are living in Gaza under Israeli blockade or on the West Bank with settlers stalking the olive groves it will surely be hard to find a promising alternative to resistance.
I agree with you. Better conditions without hate being taught from kindergarten and on has potential to increase love, tolerance, and peace in any human society. Question: can this be accomplished in Gaza?
Ah…the old ‘simple solution to complex’ problem gambit. Thank goodness there are some commenters on here with more nuanced opinions.
Hamas being ‘squished’ has so far cost 15,000 civilian deaths and the body count rising is daily. Every one of those deaths will create a dozen new jihadis, determined to wipe Israel off the face of the earth and hating the West for their support of this carnage.
So that’s your long-term solution? Simples.
What would you have Israel do? Suffer in silence? Flee the Middle East? Or, most improbably of all, fight a “nice” war with no civilian casualties and where Hamas don’t use human shields?
The “cost” of 15,000 civilian deaths (source: Hamas) is the fault of Hamas not Israel. Hamas, not Israel, brought war to Gaza and responsibility for each and every death lies with Hamas. The carnage is Hamas’s not Israel’s.
I think the number of deaths reported by Hamas is 15,000 but how many of these are Hamas fighters? Who knows! However there is no doubt that their women and children are being killed in the Israeli reprisals.
A peace settlement is urgently needed.
Do you really think that Hamas cares in the least about the deaths of Palestinian women and children? They don’t.
We do, but then we are not depraved bestial vermin like Hamas.
There’s NOTHING bestial about e’m! They are, very regrettably all too HUMAN!
15,000 civilians dead, 0 terrorists dead? How odd … Israel can’t seem to find and kill even ONE terrorist no matter how hard they try. Hamas must be invincible! 😉 😉
It would be nice to know to what degree ‘normal Palestinians’ agree with Hamas. ‘Squishing’ Hamas may leave Gaza still full of Jew-hating Arab Muslims.
‘Jew-hating Arab Muslims’
Is there any other kind?
Sadly, I don’t think it’s possible to squish an idealistic belief. It could fade into insignificance if it’s ’cause’ was squished. That would require some radical change of heart from the Jews. A two state solution is probably the only way out and IMHO should be being vigorously pursued by all parties. The ‘settlers’ – who have caused so much of the problem – should be allowed to live peacefully within the new country boundaries of Palestine in a diminishing way. ie no new buildings, demolition of buildings as a family dies out or moves – compensation to descendants if necessary, to achieve this.
Squishable or not, I don’t call ‘Kill all the Jews’ an idealistic belief.
And my simple addition, is that the evil of axis needs to be destroyed with Hamas .. ie Hezbollah and Iran. Let’s not forget Qatar has been funding Hamas & that needs to stop.
Useful as a summary of Saudi thought over the last 60 years. Weak because there was not a single mention of Çhina or Russia.
The writer talks of worries regarding the destabilising effect of Iran but who is supporting Iran?
Last week someone on this site suggested that the Sunni-Shi’ite divide was far more important than Palestine/Israel when talking about peace in the Middle East. I agreed then and I still agree.
Carado – quite right. I posted something similar in response to this article earlier this morning and It may appear here sometime today (UnH seems to keep some comments back for some hours sometimes). Rundell dismisses the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement far too easily – it’s a much more significant step than the too-and-fro with Israel. The Saudi’s invitation to BRICS and the SCO likewise. The Saudis may be hedging their bets, but they may also have a different (IMHO more realistic) understanding of the direction of travel of global power relations than some UnH contributors do.
Beyond the economics, in Yemen they’ve had a few years worth of experience of the not-entirely-marvellous Western weapons systems they’ve been paying massively for (Patriots & Abhrams etc) and seen them likewise not perform as advertised in Ukraine.
“And yet, Saudi Arabia … remain united in their desire to … eliminate terrorism.”
Are they? Are they not supposed to be behind a lot of the terrorist attacks in the world?
Like 9/11… Still pretty murky how many Saudis were involved in the terror attack apart from Osama bin Laden
Interesting piece, but as is par for the course here at UnHerd, it takes an almost entirely Western & Israeli perspective. There’s no mentioned at all of the BRICS, a group that the Saudis have been invited to join, or their interest in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) with whom the Saudis decided to become a ‘Dialogue Partner’ earlier this year with a view to full membership.
I wouldn’t dismiss the rapprochement with Iran as easily as the author does. It was a massive step given the key role the Saudis played (along with the US & UK) in fermenting and funding the Dirty War in Syria. That’s the war that gives the lie to the author’s (IMO utterly preposterous) statement that “Saudi Arabia and Israel have another goal in common: suppressing radical Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda, Isis, and the Muslim Brotherhood.” They’ve been directly funding Al Nuzra in Syria for a decade now with Israel treating their soldiers and acting at times as their air-arm. Both have been happy to ally with and use such extremists in the past – that the Saudis may be choosing not to do so now in Syria at least is probably a much more significant development than their current machinations with the Israelis.
I’m of the opinion that this may have something to do with the West’s recent failures in Ukraine & the perceived prospects for the post CV19 European economy especially now they’ve chosen to sanction themselves from all that cheap Russian energy. The Saudis can see the direction of travel here – they’re not stupid.
Imagine if Roosevelt would have agreed to establish a Jewish state in Western Germany after WW2. Now back to the present.
I’d start with UNRWA, or dismantling it to the point. The Gazans need a place to live. Other than young Western liberals and their sympathizers, no one seems to like or want them. However, they’re there and need a place and way to live after the destruction of Hamas. Israel also needs peace and security, which won’t come about with Hamas in power.
Like there was de-Nazification in Germany after WW2, there needs to be de-Hamasinization after this Gaza War. It starts in the education system in which the children are taught useful skills (not rocket making or martyrdom) and to live in peace with their neighbors. Prior to October 7, Israel was letting thousands of Gazans come to work in Israel, permitting cross border trade, offering healthcare when needed and supplying electricity. Not things typically found in an “open air-prison.” If Gazan was an open air prison, Hamas were the jailers. They spent the money on tunnels and weapons.
Gaza and Israel will need to be rebuilt and repaired. Gaza will need external, non-radical and certainly not UN help in rebuilding and creating new ways of living in in peace with Israel.
Who would do the teaching – and keep public oprder and suppress nascent terrorist organisations?
Germany was totally destroyed after WWII and had to start from 0. But then the German population is very industrious and with the help of the US‘s Marshal Plan built a successful country. I am not sure you can compare Palestinians with Germans or even the Japanese. Why haven‘t some of the 2 million Gazan Palestinians integrated into other Arab countries? All the German refugees from former German territories like East Prussia, Silesia etc. had to integrate into West or East Germany. Also the Poles from the former Soviet Union, whose villages and towns were destroyed, had to flee and were settled in the former German territories, which is now part of Western Poland. Why is there no hate anymore between these peoples?
I know nothing about MBS but wouldn’t trust anyone with a smile like that.
As the guardians of Mecca, the Saudis cannot ignore widespread sympathy for Palestine in the Muslim world. Nor can they remain indifferent to the status of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem.
***
This is diplomatic wording, sure, but the real reason the Saudis cannot remain indifferent, is what they know about Mecca.
That Muhamad never lived in it.
That it is totally unlike the places described in the Quran.
That even if these towns existed in the time Muhamad lived, they would have been tiny settlements.
And could not have -even remotely- played host to the events described in the Quran.
In 1933 the wretched Saudis entered into an unholy alliance the world’s greatest Rogue State, otherwise known as the USA for the exploitation of oil. This venture eventually became known as ARAMCO*.
Had the Saudis chosen the British as they should have done, none of this would have happened.
(*Arabian American Oil Company.)
Things worked out so much better with the Anglo-Persian/Anglo-Iranian Oil Company? Could’ve fooled me.
That was post 1945 and our ultimate ‘collapse’.
As long as Qatar financially supports Hamas……Hamas is here to stay and more Gaza Palestinians to die.
It’s quite arguable Hamas primary reason for 7/10 was to spike the Abraham Accords and to force Saudi’s into different position. Not ‘a’ reason but ‘the’ reason.
Hasn’t appeared to work…yet at least.
Much may still depend on what happens to population in Gaza as ‘phase 2’ now underway. The calls for some moderation in tactics reflects concerns about the AAs sustainability. IDF will try to walk a tightrope but far from easy.
What is he talking about? A Palestinian state? Is that the state next to Israel? Or the state instead of Israel?
https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheelders.org%2Fnews%2Fdear-president-biden-elders-open-letter-israel-and-palestine&data=05%7C01%7C%7C5080e6e4a186497fe2f308dbf536a429%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638373387247224506%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=3qxWiRp9%2B6HjRUXsI7VdP2u3OOor1Hozv7mJuAmJfjE%3D&reserved=0
Which, along with the threat posed by normalised relations with Israel generally, was surely the point. Hamas surely realised that it was losing its position. It knew that it had to act, or find itself out in the cold. It likely also knew that the attack would have to be appalling enough to provoke an extreme response from Israel. Appalling as things are in Gaza, I suspect that Hamas is disappointed that the response from Israel isn’t more extreme.
The effect has been to reignite grassroots anti Israel feeling in Arab countries, and amongst Palestinian sympathisers world wide. Arab elites may want peace and cooperation with Israel – it is in their interests. But it will be hard for them to do so against popular feelings which run so strong.
Hamas knew it had to reopen the wound. Otherwise it would have ended up in the dustbin of history, its cause ignored and eventually forgotten. So it acted in a deliberately appalling way, leaving Israel with no alternative but to respond.
Given Iran’s lukewarm reaction to the Hamas raid I think they and Hizzbolah would also be quite content the see the Sunni upstarts put down.
The longer this conflict continues the more it begins to look like a contest between DAVID and GOLIATH.
Absolutely – David, King of the Jews.
And Goliath was a Philistine was he not? And where did/do the Philistines come from?