Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz envisions a new-old regional connection that spans across the Middle East and will change the face of the area. At one end of this envisioned expanse lies the Haifa Port, and at the other – the Saudi port city Dammam on the Persian Gulf coast. The vision includes the revival of the Hijazi (or Hejaz) railway, one branch of which used to connect Tzemach, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, to the town of Daraa in southwestern Syria. That line ceased to operate in 1946. Katz's vision does not include Syria, but Saudi Arabia is an integral part of it.
Katz and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have discussed these plans with US President Donald Trump's advisers Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt. The Americans liked the idea and included it in the economic part of the "deal of the century" for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
The plan is nothing new. It was announced two years ago, but now it's taking a prominent place in regional diplomatic talks. Katz brought it up in talks he held two weeks ago with his counterparts in Abu Dhabi, and before that, in Oman. The responses he received ranged from polite to enthusiastic. They were willing to proceed with some of the infrastructure work, but not to set it in motion. Apparently, something bigger has to happen before that can take place.
Katz and Netanyahu are calling the initiative "Tracks to Regional Peace." It's goal is to create economic and strategic links between Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, via Jordan, to the Israeli railway network and the Haifa Port, creating "alternative trade routes" that are cheaper and – more importantly – safer than what currently exists, given the viable Iranian threat to maritime routes through the Persian Gulf.
The Saudis are well-versed in the plan and are basically in favor of it. Jordan, too, plays an integral role. There are plans to extend the old train line from Haifa to Beit Shean in the Jordan Valley, which was relaunched in 2016, eastward beyond the Jordanian border (via the Sheikh Hussein crossing), as well as southward toward, toward the Gilboa-Jalame crossing near Jenin, from whence it can provide service to the Palestinians if they retreat from their position of a total rejection of any plan.
From Jordan, the trains – freight trains, to start with – will continue to Irbid, Zarqa, and the Jordanian-Saudi border, along the Hijazi railway route. The Saudis and the Gulf states have already laid iron tracks from the Jordanian-Saudi border to Riyadh and the Persian Gulf ports, particularly Dammam.
A rare engine for growth
For Israel, the plan would bring real benefits, economic as well as political. A quick calculation shows that if one-third of Saudi trade moves through Israel, it would generate over $300 billion per years.
It would pay off for the Saudis, as well, by allowing them to increase economic and security cooperation with Israel and the West against Iran as well as creating an alternative to the maritime shipping routes that are under threat today. The current maritime route passes through Bab al-Mandeb to the coast of Yemen, home to the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, and the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran has a strong presence.
The land route would be much shorter and safer. The maritime route from Saudi Arabia's main Dammam Port to the Mediterranean Sea, via the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and the Suez Canal, is some 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles) long. The land route to the Haifa Port via Israel is a mere 600 kilometers (370 miles).
Most of the details of the plan are still undisclosed, but what has been revealed sets the imagination on fire. Diplomatically, Saudi Arabia and Israel are known as de facto partners. The Mossad, most of whose activity is devoted to defense and security, has been running a directorate in recent years that is focused on diplomatic and strategic matters. Mossad head Yossi Cohen made that work public at the last Herzliya Conference.
A bridgehead to Saudi Arabia already exists. The Mossad directorate, the National Security Council, and the Israeli government are trying to shore it up. Two years ago, Saudi Arabia allowed Air India flights from Israel to India to pass through Saudi airspace, shortening the length of the flight from seven to five hours. Israeli goods, including produce such as watermelons, already make their way to Gulf states via Jordan and Turkey.
Israeli cyber and technology companies that are registered abroad operate in the Saudi market. There is an expectation that Saudi Arabia will soon allow Israeli Arabs to join the over 10 million foreign workers who live and are employed there and have been awarded permanent resident status in the kingdom. Most of the Israeli Arab candidates for work in Saudi Arabia would be university graduates in the medical, planning, and engineering fields, but the offer is also expected to be open to manual laborers.
Yitzhak Gal, a research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University and an expert in trade and economic relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors recently published a paper illustrating the immense potential of ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states.
While still theoretical, Gal's findings are impressive: the untapped potential could increase Israel's per capita GDP to over $50,000 within 10 years, making Israel one of the world's 15 richest countries.
"This engine for growth would add $40-50 billion per year to Israeli exports of goods and services within a decade, which would be a 50% increase over Israel's current exports, making the Arab market the most important one for Israel after Europe," Gal says.
Who will protect the uranium?
But the hidden and open economic cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia are the relatively simple part of the two nations' "common-law" relationship. The much more complicated part, which is bearing fruit even as we speak but could be dangerous in the long term, is in the area of defense.
According to foreign reports and obfuscated remarks by some Israeli and foreign diplomats, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf states have been working together on defense, intelligence, and strategy, mostly against Iran. Senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies Dr. Yoel Guzansky, who coordinated Israel's handling of Iran in the NSC under four different NSC directors and three prime ministers, is well-versed in the matter and still consults in the field.
"Israel is caught in a kind of trap. On one hand, along with the US we are – according to foreign reports – fostering cooperation with Saudi Arabia against Iran. On the other, the system is not sufficiently aware of the ramifications of that cooperation. What is happening in Saudi Arabia in the nuclear field and in terms of missile development is being almost ignored. Today, they're with us. Tomorrow, in our region, there's no way to know. Regimes rise and regimes fall, and I don't want to even try to imagine what will happen with that if some change takes place there that isn't convenient for us," Guzansky tells Israel Hayom.
Q: What is your main concern?
"Four nuclear reactors to produce electricity have already been built in the United Arab Emirates with aid from South Korean and with American approval. The UAE made a commitment not to enrich uranium, but Bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince, announced this year that if Iran develops nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia won't wait. Now the Saudis are building a small nuclear reactor with help from Argentina, which cannot produce plutonium for a bomb. So far, it isn't causing any harm, but there is potential for harm and danger in the future. If there are regime changes in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states we can't ignore that. In the background, there are also unclear relations between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, which is a nuclear power."
Q: What kind of relations?
"Saudi Arabia funded a large part of the Pakistani nuclear program. The long-term concern is that Pakistan will give Saudi Arabia nuclear warheads or shut its eyes to the construction of a uranium enrichment facility. In the short term, the concern is that if Iran makes a nuclear breakthrough, the Saudis will request and the Pakistanis could supply them with aircraft that carry nuclear bombs, to be stationed in Saudi territory. A scenario like that should worry us."
Q: The Israeli defense establishment isn't aware of that possibility?
"People who are supposed to know aren't sleeping well at night. Just in the past six months, we learned that Saudi Arabia has a missile factory. Two months ago, we discovered that Argentina has supplied them with a nuclear reactor for research, which is already being built in Riyadh. As Saudi Arabia and the Gulf state approach the nuclear threshold, there is a process of Israel's military advantage being eroded. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are equipped with very sophisticated weapons. The Saudi and Emirati F-16s are more advanced than ours. Now the Saudis are pressuring the US administration to sell them the same F-35s we have. When the Americans refused some of their requests, the Saudis turn to China and Russia. The US tells us, somewhat justifiably, that if they don't give [the aircraft] to the Saudis, they'll buy them from the Russians or the Chinese. It's a delicate game."
Q: Isn't Israel saying anything?
"Israel has made its position clear, but quietly. We have a dilemma. On one hand [there are] close ties with those same countries, and on the other, the UAE is making massive weapons purchases, as well as acquiring nuclear capabilities, developing space technology, and purchasing spy satellites. As of now, they're not our enemies, but they could be replaced by more radical regimes. I doubt whether we put enough thought into that. The research and intelligence is not complete."
Not harmful like Qatar
Last February, the Foreign Ministry authored a document which assessed that Saudi Arabia would not be making its secret relations with Israel public any time soon. Guzansky agrees: "After all, Saudi Arabia is a conservative, puritan state, the cradle of radical Islam. Many of the radical Islamic ideologies are based on the Wahabi interpretation of Islam, which comes from Saudi Arabia. Not long ago, we solved, supposedly peacefully, the Jamal Khashoggi affair, which exposed the morally problematic aspects of the Saudi regime. I don't think that the Saudis are ready to 'come out of the closet.' It's too complicated, mainly because they aren't just some country. They are the guardians of the most important holy sites in Islam."
Indeed, the ambivalence within Saudi society recently came to light in a poll that Saudi journalist Sukina Al-Meshekhis posted on her Twitter account. She supports normalization with Israel and decided to see what her followers thought about it. Of the thousands who responded, 33% were in favor of normalized Saudi-Israeli ties; 47% opposed the idea; and 20% said they would wait until the results of the poll were published. Many expanded on their answers, and social media lit up.
The staff at the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) documented the intra-Saudi discourse and published part of it. Those who support normalized ties with Israel do so both because of the danger from Iran and because of the Palestinians' hostile attitude toward Saudi Arabia. Saudi intellectual Abdulhameed Al Hakeem, the former head of the Middle East Center for Strategic and Legal Studies in Jeddah, tweeted: "[I am] certainly [in favor of relations with Israel]. … To achieve peace between the peoples, which will lead to peace between the states, visits to Israel must be possible, and then Gulf citizens who visit Israel will comprehend the truth about Israeli society [and discover] that it is peace-loving. I sensed this myself when I visited Israel."
One Sultan Aal Swelem, who was tweeting from Riyadh, wrote, "Israel has not harmed Saudi Arabia and the Gulf like Iran and Qatar have done!" Bandar Al-Moghtarib wrote: "Israel is a fact of life that should be accepted. It is a country that seeks peace with the Gulf states and invites us to visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque and tour Israel in general."
On the other side of the argument, Saudi poet Fahad bin Abdulaziz bin Jumah wrote: "I think Israel stole an Arab country, namely Palestine, which we all love and hold dear. Accepting relations with it means accepting the occupation." Another Saudi social media user tweeted: "Israel remains a criminal entity that occupies Arab land and Muslim holy sites," whereas another user described Israel as a "cancerous entity." (All translations of Arabic tweets by MEMRI.)
However, if a similar poll had been conducted a decade ago, the results would have been completely different, and a much higher percentage of respondents would have flatly rejected the idea of normalized ties with Israel.
Formally, Saudi Arabia was and remains an enemy state. In the 1948 War of Independence it actively supported the Arab armies, and in 1967 and in 1973 is sent aid to the Arab countries that were fighting Israel. After the 1973 Yom Kippur War the Saudis led the oil boycott of the West, which had supported Israel during the war, and after the Camp David Accords that made peace between Israel and Egypt, the Saudis cut off ties with Egypt.
Only at the end of the first decade of the 21st century did reports begin to emerge about secret cooperation between the Saudis and Israel to thwart Iran's nuclear program. According to these reports, then-Mossad head Meir Dagan visited Saudi Arabia, and Israel allowed Germany to sell the Saudis 200 Leopard 2 tanks. In 2016, the historic handshake between then-Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon and Saudi Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud was documented, and that same year retired Saudi general Dr. Anwar Eshki made a historic visit to Israel as head of a delegation of Saudi businesspeople and academics.
In April 2018, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman told The Atlantic that he recognized Israel's right to exist. At the end of the year, the Defense Ministry denied a report that Israel had sold the Iron Dome missile defense system to Saudi Arabia so it could use it to defend itself against attacks from the Houthis in Yemen.
Relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia have come a long way since Saudi King Faisal threw his support behind the decisions by the Khartoum Conference, which opposed any compromise with Israel. This coming year, and possibly in the next few months, more aspects of the bilateral ties could come to light. Diplomatic officials are still skeptical, however, that official ties will be established any time soon. Even they admit that with all the will in the world – and it exists – there are still too many obstacles.
