Something has been happening in Saudi Arabia. Recently, the kingdom has adopted an overtly harsh tone toward Israel. Against this backdrop, a question arises—is the kingdom we knew, as a sworn enemy of the Iranian regime and the prime candidate for normalization, going to change direction?
The answer lies primarily within the kingdom itself. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman identifies many opportunities in Israel, but one major risk.
Alongside the diplomatic, economic and security fruits from relations with Jerusalem, he is aware that this is an explosive issue in Saudi Arabia that could damage his standing.
Within the Saudi royal house exists an entire wing that strongly opposes establishing official relations with Israel. This reluctance is not only connected to the Palestinians, who serve mainly as a diplomatic excuse.
It is primarily connected to their perception of Israel as a factor competing with them for regional hegemony. From their perspective, this is a zero-sum game.
The figure who symbolizes this line is former intelligence chief Prince Turki Al Faisal. The 80-year-old prince is one of King Faisal’s sons. While his father opposed even the partition plan, Prince Turki conditions relations with Israel on acceptance of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative (proposing full Israeli withdrawal from “occupied territories” in exchange for recognition).
This initiative includes Israel’s withdrawal from all of the Golan Heights, Judea and Samaria, and east Jerusalem, and the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Prince Turki is the one who has raised the nuclear weapons issue over the years and complains about Israeli influence in Washington. After Crown Prince Mohammed’s recent visit to the White House, he praised the cancellation of the bias in favor of Israel regarding trade in advanced weapons.
Normalization for the crown prince carries one major risk. The anti-Israel faction is not a small wing. It is enough to mention that today, thousands of princes live in Saudi Arabia and abroad who are descendants or relatives of the state’s founder, Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud, aka Ibn Saud.
In this sense, the clichéd expression “a figure in the Saudi royal house” loses its value. After all, not everyone among them holds a position of influence. Some of them can be businesspeople and nothing more. Nevertheless, they constitute a power group whose mood the ruler must take into account.
Since the outbreak of the regional war triggered by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has been perceived by them as a power whose hand is in everything—from involvement in Syria, through recognition of Somaliland, to Lebanon and Yemen. They do not see Jerusalem as an ally, but as a competitor.
Beyond veteran princes such as Turki, there is also the religious establishment. Despite Mohammed’s attempts to weaken the clerics from the conservative Wahhabi (ultra-orthodox Sunni) stream, while promoting reforms in women’s status, opening the economy and removing constraints from cultural life in the kingdom, in Mecca you can still hear that same old refrain.
The conservative religious establishment
In Friday sermons, the imams still preach against “the Jews” and for “victory for Palestine from Allah.” Their traditional antisemitism has not gone anywhere. In the kingdom, incidentally, they do not try to hide this and broadcast the speeches on television channels and social networks.
The third group Mohammed must consider is the young generation—a significant power base in his view. In the social media era, Israel became a pariah state during the Gaza war.
Despite attempts by Saudi channels to present a more balanced picture than Qatari channels, Israel is still perceived as the main culprit in Gaza’s destruction, and not Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organizations.
If there is good news, it is that in 2025, there has been a certain reversal of this trend.
From here, the crown prince must navigate between his personal positions and the kingdom’s political landscape.
In this environment, it is convenient for him to present himself as an adversarial factor to Israel in the diplomatic arena, a diplomatic player leading a wave of recognition of a Palestinian state in the West, and competing with Jerusalem as Washington’s main ally in the Middle East.
From his perspective, there is no rush regarding relations with Israel. A factor that maintains the “existing order” in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Somalia and Sudan, and does not seek to change it. Moreover, the crown prince presents a model of “active conservatism.”
Originally published by Israel Hayom.
