Let’s start from the end: peace with Saudi Arabia is a fait accompli, the question is whether the process will end by 2030 or it will already happen in the coming months, will it be complete peace like with the United Arab Emirates or Jordan? I appreciate full full peace as with the UAE / opinion
To understand where we are, let’s start from the beginning. Until not many years ago, Saudi Arabia, which is the largest and most powerful Arab country and owns the holy places of Islam and in fact also controls the Arab world, was considered an enemy country of Israel and the leader of the Arab boycott. We never even dreamed that we would ever be able to visit there or talk about peace with them.
Several years ago, according to foreign publications led by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who understood that there were changes in the Middle East and an opportunity to change world order, quiet talks began between him and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is a man of vision and a leader of tremendous reforms in Saudi Arabia, who began an internal change in his country and is leading the project The ambitious 2030, from a country that was closed to tourists for the past two years, the country was opened to foreign citizens by issuing a fast visa online and millions of tourists entered the kingdom, a country where women were not allowed to drive allowed women to drive, and more and more changes. At the same time, the future city of Niom is being built, which will be ready in 2030.
According to foreign publications, the relationship between Netanyahu and Salman is a friendly relationship. Israeli law and suddenly on a bright day in January 2020 Interior Minister Aryeh Deri Deri signed for the first time a permit for Israelis to visit Saudi Arabia, for the purpose of business meetings or looking for investments, after that the historic peace agreements, the Abraham agreements, were unexpectedly signed by Netanyahu, which those who know anything know would not have been signed without the approval of Saudi Arabia , at the same time, Saudi Arabia approved for the first time flights of Israeli planes over its territory to Dubai, so the process continued little by little.
A few years ago, Saudi Arabia removed the incitement materials against Israel and against Jews from the schools, and in a survey conducted in Saudi Arabia not long ago, over 50% want normalization with Israel, one Saudi young man who has a large part in the peace process between Israel and the Arab world is the Saudi blogger Muhammad Saud, a young Saudi young man speaking A Hebrew who started writing on social media in favor of peace, the truth is that at first I didn’t believe it was real, I was sure it was a guy from the top of my head, the guy made a revolution in the discourse on peace in Israel and especially in Arab countries, slowly more and more people from many Arab countries began to talk quietly about peace and today on social media there are Crowds supporting peace.
I visit many Arab countries and today I have many friends in the Arab world who are full supporters of peace. I also visited Saudi Arabia several times and was very pleasantly surprised by the attitude of the residents there. I felt very safe there and I did not feel any fear or hostile attitude. On the contrary, many spoke in favor of normalization with Israel and some wanted To see that there will be a Palestinian solution, but this is because they strongly support what the King and the Crown Prince want, to sum up the matter, there is no doubt that the Bennett and Lapid era stopped the process that was progressing and Biden did not contribute much to the process either.
Now Netanyahu has returned to the Prime Ministership and one of his main goals is peace with Saudi Arabia. I see that the process is progressing, the question is whether it will happen already within a few months, as Prime Minister Netanyahu wants, or will it take a little longer, but peace will happen in a big way, note that not long ago Israel agreed That the islands near Eilat will move from Egypt to Saudi Arabia and that Israelis will be able to enter, that Israelis could fly to a sports event held at the end of the year in Saudi Arabia, that Israelis could enter the City of Naum, but I believe that soon Netanyahu and bin Salman will conclude a full peace agreement, and the end of the Israeli-Arab conflict and open up a bright future for investment and tourism between The countries, the story with Iran, in my opinion, will not harm the desire to reach an agreement, and perhaps the opposite, and I do not want to go into explanations here as to what the agreement with Iran is. Peace is already happening, the only question is when it will be, full peace now or in a few years.
The fact that Saudi Arabia signed an agreement with Iran does not contradict an agreement with Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates also signed with Israel and have relations with Iran, each country has different interests, Saudi Arabia signed a cold agreement with a country whose words cannot be trusted, the Saudis signed without a choice, Because the US did not help her and rather harassed her, the extreme left’s pressure on Biden not to support Saudi Arabia gave its signals, so the Saudis turned to Iran so that the war with the Houthis in Yemen would stop, if there is a possibility of an agreement with Israel, the Saudis will arrive first, only before that should To calm down a bit some people in the government who are doing damage to the possibility of normalization with Saudi Arabia