Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, September 18, 2019. (U.S. Department of State)

Just hours after Israel broke the ceasefire last month and resumed its military operations in Gaza, Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry released a resolute statement condemning Israel’s bombardment of civilian areas, demanding an “immediate cessation of Israeli killing, violence, and destruction, as well as the protection of Palestinian civilians from the unjust Israeli war machine.” This not only reflected the kingdom’s anger and frustration with Israeli military actions, but also signaled its increasingly hardening tone towards Israel.

Even as recently as February, news reports and commentaries on a potential Saudi-Israel normalization deal continued to surface, despite mounting anger across the region. Brokered by Washington, the proposed peace effort would aim to secure a defense pact between the United States and Saudi Arabia in exchange for normalizing ties with Israel. U.S. decisionmakers insisted that a deal was in its final stages, and recently, a giant billboard appeared in Washington, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv depicting Trump and Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) shaking hands with an Israeli flag in the background. The sign proclaimed, “Israel is ready.”

However, news of the negotiations has grown sparse, likely due to the resumption of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza and explicit plans to ethnically cleanse the enclave that have only escalated public outrage in Saudi Arabia. Thus to the extent that talks are ongoing, they are volatile and fragile, and will remain closely guarded by the Saudi leadership — as the kingdom continues to call out Israel’s actions in Gaza and position itself as a champion of the Palestinian cause.

With tensions continuing to mount, Trump will likely address and attempt to reinvigorate normalization efforts in his upcoming visit to Saudi Arabia. And considering the alarming conditions ravaging Gaza, Saudi is likely to cling strongly to its position that normalization will not be achieved without a two-state solution, a position the Israeli government fiercely rejects. But whether the kingdom can pull off this balancing act — fulfilling its own geopolitical ambitions through normalizing ties with Israel, while responding to increasingly anti-Israel domestic public sentiment — remains to be seen.

 Normalizing normalization

A commitment to the Palestinian right to self-determination has been a core element of Saudi foreign policy since the early days of the state. But its policies towards the Israeli state have not remained static: while the kingdom’s first leaders firmly opposed the surge in European Jewish immigration to historic Palestine, for the past 40 years, it has been a leading proponent of a two-state solution.

In 1981, the Fahd Peace Plan (named for then Saudi Crown Prince Fahd) proposed the establishment of a Palestinian state in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Without an explicit promise to normalize relations with Israel, the plan affirmed that “all states in the region should be able to live in peace,” which was initially resisted by other states in the Arab League. Yet the following year, the Arab summit formally adopted the Fahad Plan — which Israel then rejected.

Saudi Arabia made another attempt to recognize Israel in 2002 when it put forward the Arab Peace Initiative (API), which would see Arab states normalize ties with Israel on the condition of a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders. In part, the decision to advance these proposals through the Arab League reflected an understanding that the Palestinian cause still remained a red line for Arab populations. If unilateral peace treaties with Israel could incite domestic turmoil — as evident by the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981 — then collective action would help defuse domestic and regional backlash.

Indeed, normalization remains a highly contentious issue for Saudi Arabia, one that could threaten the kingdom’s national security and its moral and religious legitimacy in the Muslim world. The government has continued to lean on the API to deflect public concerns about normalization and reaffirm their commitment to Palestinian self-determination. But under Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), Saudi Arabia has augmented this approach: rather than simply anticipate and respond to public sentiment about a peace deal with Israel, the state has tried to reshape it.

President Donald Trump walks with Mohammed bin Salman along the West Colonnade of the White House, Tuesday, March 14, 2017. (Shealah Craighead/Official White House Photo)

Bin Salman is arguably the most ambitious leader in Saudi’s modern history, who aims to fundamentally transform Saudi society. Part of his agenda is to develop a highly educated and tech-savvy population that can build and sustain an economy beyond fossil fuel revenue. Nevertheless, the Saudi social contract remains the same, where loyalty and political quiescence are nonnegotiable under the guise of nationalism.

The prospect of Saudi-Israeli normalization has presented a challenge to this framework. While some Saudi officials have claimed that the kingdom’s youth are less attached to the Palestinian cause, recent polls indicate otherwise: The 2023 Arab Youth Survey, for instance, found only 2 percent of Saudi youth support normalizing ties with Israel.

In this context, the government has developed new strategies to socialize youth to view Israel as a partner for peace, as opposed to an occupying force and an adversary. According to a recent study by Israeli textbook-monitoring organization IMPACT-se, Saudi school textbooks no longer depict Zionism as a racist European ideology. And while they retain references to the country’s dedication to the Palestinian cause, the word “Palestine” has been omitted from some maps.

The curricular changes mirror those implemented by the UAE and Bahrain soon after signing the US-brokered Abraham Accords in 2020. While there was no indication of Saudi participation at the time, the Accords presented a critical opportunity for the Saudi government to shape and examine domestic sentiment about normalization.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. President Donald Trump, UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani attend the Abraham Accords signing ceremony at the White House, September 15, 2020. (Avi Ohayon/GPO)

State-funded news outlets such as Al Arabiya and Okaz framed the Abraham Accords as a pact for regional peace and stability and highlighted its economic benefits for the signatory states. Similarly, several articles published by Arab News explored how integrating Israel into the regional economy could boost trade and help advance the regional tech sector — aligning with MbS’s push for economic diversification.

Other state-backed media took a softer, less direct approach towards promoting normalization. Earlier in 2020, the Saudi-owned channel MBC released “Um Haroun,” a television series that depicts the life of a Jewish woman living in the Arab Gulf states region in the 1940s and the fate of the Jewish community thereafter. Some observers proclaimed the purpose of the show was to condition the public for a Saudi-Israeli peace deal.

Even high-profile figures took part in reshaping the narrative, including Prince Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud, former director general of Saudi Intelligence. In a 2020 interview with Al Arabiya, he sharply criticized the “failures” and “ingratitude” of Palestinian leaders after they had objected to the Abraham Accords, with the intent to “clarify matters to Saudi citizens.” While still affirming that the “Palestinian cause is a just cause,” his remarks signalled not only frustration with the Palestinian leadership but an implicit support for the idea of normalization — or at least the belief that peace treaties with Israel should not be condemned as a betrayal of Palestinians.

Fire and smoke rises during Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, October 8, 2023. (Atia Mohammed/Flash90)

 The ‘huge problem’

It would be an understatement to say that Israel’s military operations in Gaza since October 7 have undermined Saudi Arabia’s meticulous socialization strategies. What may plausibly constitute a genocide, according to the International Court of Justice, has not only shattered the frail momentum toward normalization but has also undoubtedly reignited deep-seated resistance to any ties with Israel and reaffirmed a commitment to the Palestinian cause within Saudi society.

By December 2023, a poll conducted by the Washington Institute found that 96 percent of Saudis believed that Arab countries should “immediately break all diplomatic, political, economic, and any other contacts with Israel, in protest against its military action in Gaza.” And while over the previous four years, Saudis had been slowly warming to the idea of economic (if not political) ties with Israel — growing from 8 percent in favor in June 2020 to 43 percent by the end of 2022 — the same survey found that nearly all of those gains had been erased by the war.

Two months later, the Arab Center carried out a survey of public opinion about Israel’s war in Gaza across 16 Arab countries. Its findings from Saudi Arabia echoed those of the Washington Institute poll: 68 percent of Saudis were opposed to their country formally recognizing Israel and 95 believed that the Palestinian struggle concerns all Arabs, compared to 38 percent and 69 percent, respectively, in 2022.

It is the harrowing footage coming out of Gaza and spread across Arab social media that has helped to drive these dramatic swings in Saudi public opinion — a fact of which Saudi leaders and officials are well aware. In a meeting last September with former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Mohammed bin Salman bluntly stated that if he were to pursue normalization, “I could end up getting killed.” Even while admitting that he is not prioritizing the Palestinian cause, he noted that more than half of the population is younger than him and had limited exposure to Palestine prior to October 7. “For most of them, they never really knew much about the Palestinian issue. And so, they’re being introduced to it for the first time through this conflict. It’s a huge problem.”

Palestinians fleeing Beit Lahia via Salah al-Din Street to Gaza City, October 22, 2024. (Omar Elqataa)

In other words, Gaza coverage on social media is not only a headache for the Zionist lobby and U.S. politicians, but also for Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf states. The stream of unfiltered videos of massacred Palestinians is a bitter reminder that the region continues to be held in a U.S. and Israeli chokehold, where regional leaders are subservient to American ambitions.

Not only does this pose a collective psychological toll, but it outright contradicts the narrative — propagated by some government news outlets and public figures in the region — that normalization would serve the Palestinian cause by promoting regional stability which, in turn, would ultimately create the conditions for Palestinian sovereignty, security, and economic development. And beyond the catastrophe in Gaza, inflammatory incitements made by some Israeli politicians and public figures are perceived as not only insulting to Palestinians but to Arabs writ large, further complicating normalization efforts going forward.

 ‘Normalization is betrayal’

After October 7, the Saudi government rushed to implement a multi-faceted approach to prevent mounting internal frustrations from spiraling out of control and potentially upending the kingdom’s social contract.

Social media platforms were among the first arenas where the state sought to limit the reach of posts that expressed solidarity with Palestinians and could exacerbate grievances against the Saudi government. Even before the war, X (formerly Twitter) once buzzed with Saudi-led hashtags against normalization, including #سعوديون_ضد_التطبيع (“Saudis against normalization”) and #التطبيع_خيانة (“Normalization is betrayal”). After October 7, numerous high-profile Saudis amplified anti-Israel sentiment and expressed solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza on social media. But by May 2024, Saudi Arabia had begun cracking down on this activity, taking down posts that expressed opposition to Israel and its Gaza campaign and even detaining social media users. An anonymous source with ties to the Saudi government claimed that the arrests were “motivated by concerns over potential threats to the country’s security from pro-Iranian influences.”

Alongside these measures, Saudi Arabia has also long sought to leverage non-state actors on social media to disseminate the idea that normalization is a strategic tool for the kingdom and to change perceptions about Israel — even after October 7. Other prominent Saudi citizens, even if not directly paid by the government, have used their platforms to echo its messaging. For example, in May 2024, Saudi academic Khaled Al-Dakhil, who has amassed 282,000 followers on X, slammed signatory states for rushing to normalize with Israel “for free” and without demanding concessions for Palestinians — unlike Saudi Arabia’s position — stressing their inability to stop Israeli aggression on Gaza. In this way, Al-Dakhil reinforced the government’s stance, legitimizing normalization not as an abandonment of the Palestinian people or the potential of a Palestinian state, but rather a strategic and deliberate commitment to it.

Aside from social media activity, the Saudi government has sought to control public sentiment and grievances over Gaza through state-approved activism, such as charities and organized rallies, which provide citizens an outlet to respond to the war — albeit in a strictly humanitarian, rather than political, register. In November 2024, the Gaza Relief donation campaign amassed approximately $26.7 million from across different factions of Saudi society to provide aid to Palestinians in the enclave.

For their part, government-sponsored news outlets, such as Al Arabiya and Asharq Al-Awsat, and well-known public figures shift their tone in response to Israeli military actions and statements by Israeli politicians. In moments of relentless military aggression, state media and officials adopt an hostile posture, condemning the Israeli army and stressing the urgency of protecting civilian lives — a drastic shift from their coverage after the 2020 Abraham Accords.

However, in moments of relative calm, the channels seek to introduce Israeli perspectives into Saudi and Arab households across the region, all while reaffirming the government’s commitment to a Palestinian state. For example, Al Arabiya interviewed IDF Spokesperson Daniel Hagari last August, during which he presented the Israeli perspective on Yahya Sinwar, former Hamas leader, Hezbollah, and Iran. The interview was uploaded on Al Arabiya’s YouTube page, drawing criticism from many users — and revealing the limits of how far the Saudi media can stretch their influence strategies without facing serious backlash.

 Red lines crossed

Saudi Arabia’s patience was nearly completely eroded when Trump, in a meeting with Netanyahu at the White House on Feb. 4, proposed that the United States should take over Gaza and permanently displace the Palestinian population. To make matters worse, Trump claimed that Saudi Arabia was not demanding a Palestinian state as a precondition for normalizing ties with Israel.

As soon as Trump made these remarks, the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a sharply worded statement reaffirming the kingdom’s commitment to “the establishment of a Palestinian state,” a position that was “non-negotiable and not subject to compromise.” Two days later, Netanyahu told Israel’s Channel 14 that Saudi Arabia should consider establishing a Palestinian state within its borders, given its land resources.

In response, the Ministry described his remarks as “the words of an extremist, occupying mindset that fails to grasp the significance of Palestinian land to its people.” Given the government’s vigorous tone, state media outlets seized the opportunity to mirror this frustration and escalate anti-Israel rhetoric. Al-Ikhabriya referred to Netanyahu as “a Zionist, son of a Zionist,” insisting that “the occupation has one face, and that face is Benjamin Netanyahu.”

What was even more surprising is the sudden shift in the portrayal of Hamas after Netanyahu’s remarks, traditionally depicted by Saudi media as a terrorist organization. Just last October, the Saudi-funded MBC channel released a clip depicting Hamas leaders as “faces of terrorism,” which provoked severe backlash among viewers across the region. But now, some outlets and notable figures have resorted to depicting Hamas in a more nuanced manner. Saudi author Nawaf Al-Qudaimi expressed support for his government “to re-establish engagement” with the group and to “close its airspace to Israeli aircrafts.”

Unsurprisingly, the Trump administration continues to maintain an optimistic, seriously disconnected view about the feasibility of a Saudi-Israel peace deal. Mike Huckabee, Trump’s ambassador to Israel, recently illustrated this unrealistic optimism when he told Republican senators in his confirmation hearing that he would prioritize Saudi-Israeli normalization. “It’s possible that this president could achieve something in the Middle East… [of] biblical proportion,” he affirmed.

The Biden administration exhibited a similar attitude after October 7 but failed to achieve any progress. And unlike in his previous term in office, Trump has narrower grounds to tempt Saudi with security guarantees or economic incentives, considering the profound risks associated with normalization, which Washington continues to overlook. The display of steadfast support for the Palestinian cause since the first day of the war illustrates the enduring strength of the issue within Saudi society — reminding decisionmakers both in Washington and Riyadh the majority are insusceptible to influence.

Hind Al Ansari

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