High on the agenda of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with US President Donald Trump at the White House this week is a potential deal to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Trump wants to move fast on it, having dispatched his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, to Riyadh both during the transition and last week.
The Gaza war is over. There was no famine, no genocide, no ethnic cleansing.
Hamas needs to check in on reality and move along.
The Gazans want a different path.
Saudi Arabia and Israel just need the excuse and Trump is pushing the excuse they want.
Many of the individual Arabs I have known and worked with have a very different point of view. Most of them have long held that Sephardic Jews should be well treated. It is a mixed history over the centuries but it is not a simple history. It is grudgingly admitted that Israel does exist and Jews have a place in the Middle East. But that grudgingly part is more like choosing what football team you support.