When you allow people to speak their minds in the Middle East, a very different view emerges of Israel and the Western consensus it represents.
Normalisation, or indeed membership of US President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace”, turns out to be lip gloss spread all too thinly over a regional mood of anger and humiliation at what Israel is being allowed to get away with.
To everyone’s surprise, not least his own, Saudi academic and writer Dr Ahmed Altuwaijri was recently allowed to speak his mind about Israel and its closest Arab partner, the United Arab Emirates.
Nothing is written or posted in the kingdom without some form of licence from above. Altuwaijri delivered an incendiary analysis of the UAE’s relationship with Israel, accusing the rulers of Abu Dhabi of throwing themselves into the arms of Zionism, becoming a “Trojan horse” for the project of establishing Greater Israel.
Never before had such direct language been used in Saudi Arabia about UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed, who for more than a decade had acted as the kingdom’s brother-in-arms in crushing the Arab Spring in Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Syria.
Altuwaijri’s article appeared in a newspaper close to Saudi authorities. So when I met him, the first thing I wanted to know was: had he consulted or sought permission from the foreign ministry before publication?
Altuwaijri says his article was his work alone. He neither spoke for the government nor wanted to speak for it. Rather, he said his words had burst forth out of a duty to speak the truth during a national crisis.
Split long in the making
No sooner had Altuwaijri’s article appeared than it was nervously taken down. There were immediate protests in Tel Aviv and Washington, as the Emirates swiftly activated its pro-Israel network in the US, which accused the Saudi writer of antisemitism. Altuwaijri’s column was treated as an international incident.
The Anti-Defamation League crowed victory, claiming the article had been taken down shortly after its own post went up.
But then the unusual happened: the article was reinstated from on high. A social media commentator widely assumed to be the voice of Saud al-Qahtani, the kingdom’s media tsar, reposted the link, claiming the article had never disappeared.
This led me to the second thing I really wanted to know. Was this rift between two Gulf stalwarts emotional, something that would disappear in the next mutual embrace, or strategic?
Altuwaijri was clear on that, too. In his view, a profound regional shift is taking place, sparked by the genocide in Gaza and recent events in Yemen – but it is a split long in the making.
It starts with Gaza but goes far and wide. This view may surprise some who witnessed a series of official attempts to muzzle public outrage as the war was raging.
International festivals hosted by the kingdom continued regardless. No pro-Palestinian demonstrations were allowed, and it was deemed illegal even to tweet about Gaza.
Below the surface, the kingdom felt humiliated by Israel. It had twice sponsored major peace initiatives, one under King Fahd and a second under King Abdullah when he was still crown prince. Both were founded on the principle of land for peace and reinstating fundamental Palestinian rights. Saudi Arabia had also regularly hosted attempts to reconcile Fatah with Hamas.
But in scale the genocide exceeded anything that had ever happened before.
“The size of the evil and the genocide that took place convinced Saudi Arabia that with this mentality ruling Israel, there could never be peace. There could never be cooperation,” Altuwaijri said. “And that is why the Saudi rhetoric and language have shifted, because Saudi Arabia, being the heart of the Islamic world, the most respected Arab country worldwide, could never just watch that and let it pass without taking a position.”
Fragmenting the region
According to Altuwaijri, Saudi Arabia’s presence on Trump’s cynically named “Board of Peace” is little more than a damage-limitation exercise.
That Israel should use the razing of Gaza as a springboard for a more ambitious attempt to impose itself as a military hegemon of the region is nothing new for this Saudi academic.
The plan that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pursuing in Syria, Lebanon and now Iran was spelled out in some detail by an Israeli journalist and adviser to former Israeli leader Ariel Sharon some 44 years ago.
With the 1978 Camp David Accords between Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and his Israeli counterpart, Menachem Begin, firmly in place – or so it was perceived at the time – Oded Yinon was an outsider. In a paper in the journal Kivunim, entitled “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s”, he suggested that the world was witnessing a new epoch in history, in which the rationalist and humanist foundations of the West were in a state of collapse.
Yinon described the Muslim Arab states as a “temporary house of cards put together by foreigners”, in a region arbitrarily sliced up by imperial powers. He concluded that Israel should bring about their fragmentation into a mosaic of ethnic and confessional groupings.
This is very close to what Gideon Saar, then a newly appointed foreign minister, meant in November 2024 when he said Israel should cooperate with the Kurds and other minorities in Syria. Describing the Kurds as Israel’s “natural ally”, Saar said his country should also approach the Druze minority in Syria and Lebanon. Since then, the fragmentation of Syria has become Israel’s official policy.
This policy has encountered some notable setbacks. Damascus has since regained control of Kurdish-run areas and oil fields, and Trump’s envoy, Tom Barrack, is a staunch supporter of Syrian unity.
But unlike in 1982, when Yinon was arguing that Egypt should be dismantled into an Israeli-controlled Sinai and a Christian Coptic state on Egypt’s northern border, today’s regional movers and shakers in Tel Aviv can now count on a staunch ally in Mohammed bin Zayed, both in relation to the Druze and to its wider schemes.
Partnership shattered
Their alliance has now been perceived as a threat to Saudi Arabia’s national interest.
In Altuwaijri’s account, Riyadh lost patience with Abu Dhabi’s attempts to be a small country with a big reach. He said Saudi Arabia had invited the UAE into Yemen, only to find it was actively splitting the country up for its own benefit.
The same is happening in Sudan, with the UAE’s proven and widely documented military support for the Rapid Support Forces, and in Somaliland, the breakaway part of northern Somalia.
Altuwaijri recalls a conversation he had with the former Tunisian president, Moncef Marzouki. At the time, Abu Dhabi was trying to undermine democracy in Tunisia by sending armoured cars to the opposition. Marzouki told him, “How could this happen? How could a member of the Arab League send another member of the Arab League armoured cars for the opposition, without the knowledge of the government?”
In Saudi eyes, Abu Dhabi is no more than “a small district of Riyadh”. For Altuwaijri, the two countries cannot be compared – not in size, population or economic performance.
But why has this partnership now been shattered? I reminded Altuwaijri of the role Mohammed bin Zayed had played in promoting Mohammed bin Salman in Washington before the latter became Saudi crown prince.
Altuwaijri said the break between the two leaders had been building for some time. In his telling, Mohammed bin Zayed never accepted that economic volume and concentration would move quickly from the Emirates to Saudi Arabia, and he was jealous of the kingdom’s economic growth.
‘Iran has many cards’
So the kingdom has shifted – and not just away from Abu Dhabi, but towards Turkey. Just as importantly, it has maintained the detente with Iran.
How much longer Trump will wait to launch his second attack on Iran in a year is anyone’s guess, but the armada he has assembled within firing range speaks for itself. No less than nine Arab leaders called Trump to persuade him to give the talks taking place in Muscat a chance.
Altuwaijri says Saudi Arabia played the key role. Since then, disquiet can only have mounted.
“Iran is not Venezuela. Iran has many cards to use in such a situation, and they are very destructive cards,” Altuwaijri said. “Iran could attack American bases in the region; could go even further than that, when it is a matter of existential threat, to attack all entities in the region, to destroy the Gulf, and to blockade the Hormuz Strait.
“And it may … go even further and attack Israel with more devastating ballistic missiles,” Altuwaijri added. “God knows what the Shia minorities in the region would do. So it was a huge gamble, totally unrealistic, totally reckless. And I think that’s why Saudi Arabia threw all its weight to prevent it as much as possible.”
Since our interview, US Senator Lindsey Graham, often treated as the voice of Trump, has told Saudi Arabia to “knock it off”. In the language of a street brawler that passes today for diplomacy, Graham said at the Munich Security Conference last week: “I’m tired of this crap. MBZ is not a Zionist, and you are emboldening Iran by having this conflict.”
But what Altuwaijri and many others like him are saying should be taken seriously by Washington, which currently has no other idea than to be led by the nose by Netanyahu into the next war.
The forthcoming war will suit the interests of no one more than Israel, which, like Abu Dhabi, is a small country with big ideas for the region.
Source: MEE
