Jonathan Schanzer tells Fox News Digital that for now, talks between Saudi Arabia and Israel are likely to stay behind the scenes.
After the Hamas attack last week, Saudi Arabia said it would shift its attention from talks with Israel to talks with Iran. However, an expert told Fox News Digital that a deal to bring the two countries back to normalcy is still possible.
The relationship between Saudi Arabia and Israel has been going on for months or even years, according to Dr. Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He told Fox News Digital this.
He also said, “The relationship will exist whether there is, you know, any normalization or not.” He stressed that “normalization is a process, not an event,” and that it will probably continue “below the radar… no matter what happens here.”
Hamas fired thousands of rockets into Israel last week, killing at least 3,200 people. At least 1,300 Israeli civilians and soldiers and 27 Americans were among them. The Palestinian health ministry says that more than 8,700 people have been hurt and at least 2,215 have been killed.
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There were rumors recently, including during an interview with Bret Baier, chief political anchor for Fox News, and executive editor of “Special Report with Bret Baier” with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, that relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel were getting closer to normalizing. This may have led to the attack.
Everyone would have won big with this move, but Iran would have lost big because it has long backed Hamas’s terrorism in Gaza.
But two people who know about the situation told Reuters that the crown prince has already talked to Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi to try to stop any more fighting that might happen in the area.
One of the sources said that talks couldn’t go on right now and that when they did, Saudi Arabia would have to put the needs of the Palestinian people first.
A top Iranian official told Reuters that Raisi’s call to the crown prince was meant to back “Palestine and stop the spread of war in the region.” The official also said that the call was “good and promising.”
A second source from Iran said the call went on for 45 minutes and was approved by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
When Saudi Arabia first heard about the attack in Israel, it seemed to blame Israel for the conflict by bringing up its past “warnings” to Israel about how it was treating the Palestinian people. At the same time, the Foreign Ministry said it was “closely following the developments.”
The statement said, “The Kingdom remembers its repeated warnings of the dangers of the situation exploding as a result of the continued occupation and deprivation of the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights and the repetition of systematic provocations against its sanctities.” It also called for more work to be done to find a two-state solution and called Israel’s military the “Occupation Forces.”
Officials in the United States didn’t like the remark. On Saturday, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, told a top Saudi official, “If you want a normal relationship with the United States, this is not a normal statement.”
“You don’t want to be in the cheering section with Iran and Hezbollah,” he said about the talk, as reported by The New York Times.
Fortune talked to Ian Bremmer, president and founder of the geopolitical consulting company Eurasia Group. He said that he thought the deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia had become “unpalatable” because of the Saudi statement, which made it “impossible” for both countries to start talking to each other.
Schanzer didn’t agree with that. He said that the relationship between the two countries and the US would help keep them in check and help them reach a peace deal.
“This is quite normal that countries that don’t have full diplomatic relations will often start first working through intelligence agencies, covert channels,” Schanzer talked about. “So that covert channel exists, and I don’t think is likely to change any time soon.”
Antony Blinken, the U.S. Secretary of State, visited Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, among other important countries in the area.
During his talks, Blinken kept stressing how important it was to end the fighting quickly and protect the lives of people caught in the crossfire between the IDF and Hamas, the group that runs the Gaza Strip.
Shanzer said that the real question was when the talks could resume, regardless of whether they happened “against the background of this crisis” or not.
“I think the Saudis have to be wondering whether Israel is the same strong country that it thought it was dealing with and it thought it could benefit from through an alliance,” he said.
“That said, at the same time, Israel will need to be very careful about the optics of whatever comes next in the Gaza Strip because the Saudi public will not want to see bloodshed and misery and destruction in Gaza,” he said.
“The people of Saudi Arabia will not want to see death, suffering, and damage in Gaza.” He said, “They still care about the Palestinian people, even if they may have become less determined to directly help them by pushing for a Palestinian state.”
