YACOOB ABBA OMAR: What is Saudi Arabia really up to in its game of chess?

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has in the past been routinely pilloried for its misogynistic policies and practices, for its assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, its ultraconservative interpretation of Islam and generally for being a repressive state.

Some of this seems to be changing in recent years. Its government, led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), has stripped the religious police of the right to arrest, allowed women to drive, lifted a ban on cinemas, sponsored music concerts and entertainment events and recently released dozens of political prisoners.

Joey Shea of Human Rights Watch captures the reasons for these changes as “sentencing people to decades-long terms for tweets is ultimately bad for business”. An example of Saudi Arabia’s economic objectives can be seen in the efforts around the Neom project, which aims to create a $500bn hi-tech, futuristic urban industrial development along the Red Sea coast. 

In pursuit of its pecuniary interests, Saudi Arabia has, as recently as September 2023, indicated that it was on the brink of signing the 2020 Abraham Accords with Israel. Then US president Donald Trump celebrated the accords as the “deal of the century”, initiating a new era of open diplomacy between Israel and four Arab nations.

But the kingdom had resisted signing and this was one of the reasons for Hamas’s operation on October 7 2023, throwing everything into one last desperate effort to preserve the possibility of a Palestinian state.

Economic interests to some extent explain Saudi Arabia’s change of heart. Others included the perceived Iran threat, and more importantly the crown prince wanting a secure path to the crown. In the obscure game of Saudi succession he has to secure the support of the kingdom’s council. One sure way of achieving that is through leveraging off his relationship with the US.

Hence economic and political considerations explain the charm offensive in the US, with US billionaires attending a Saudi investment conference on February 19 in Miami, addressed by Trump, who spoke of a new dawn of co-operation between the kingdom and the US.

In September 2023  the crown prince called for a more formal agreement with the US, saying it would “save effort from the Saudi side of not switching to other places”, referring to its rapprochement with China and renewing of diplomatic relations with Iran. 

Tom Stevenson, writing in the London Review of Books, points out that after October 7 a requirement that Israel make some concessions to the Palestinians was bolted onto the understanding with the US. “The result was a proposed ‘mega deal’ consisting of a reformulated US-Saudi alliance, some face-saving in the form of Saudi-Israel diplomatic normalisation and scraps for the Palestinians”.

As for Israel, since the beginning of this year, and especially as the Israeli-Gaza ceasefire was taking shape, Prince Khalid Bandar, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the UK, spoke of normalising ties that must “lead to the creation of a Palestinian state”.  In September 2024 the crown prince told the consultative Shura Council that the kingdom would not recognise Israel without the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, including Gaza and the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital. 

The Saudis have been accused of blowing hot and cold over Palestinian sovereignty but it’s clear the Saudi leadership is concerned about the rage the war in Gaza has fuelled among a generation of young Arabs, thus doubling down on Palestinian statehood. 

In this context, Trump shocked Arab states by saying not only that Gaza should be emptied of Palestinians, but also that the US should take over the strip. The Saudi foreign ministry responded making clear that it was not budging from its call for a Palestinian state on the borders of 1967.

Lebanese journalist and author Kim Ghattas captures the state of play when she writes: “Enter the grand Middle East chessboard with the weak square of a devastated Gaza, an emboldened Israeli far right and an American president who sees everything as a real estate deal, even when it violates international law”.

• Abba Omar is director of operations at the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection.