The Saudi mindset is showing signs of a shift toward Israel

Israeli journalist Yoav Limor didn’t know what to expect when he traveled with a colleague this month to Saudi Arabia, a country long notorious for spreading anti-Israeli sentiments in textbooks and in the sermons of some imams.

They were in for “a pleasant surprise,” he wrote in a subsequent column for the Israel Hayom newspaper, as Saudi market vendors and taxi drivers greeted them with curiosity rather than contempt.

“Some smiled and shook their heads in disbelief or concern. Others were curious and struck up conversations,” Limor wrote, adding, “Nobody made us feel unwelcome.”

US President Joe Biden’s trip to the Middle East, which began on Wednesday, has fueled speculation about a possible breakthrough in normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which does not recognize the Jewish state.

The kingdom has repeatedly said it will uphold the Arab League’s decades-old position of not establishing official relations with Israel until the conflict with the Palestinians is resolved.

Analysts stress that despite growing behind-the-scenes business and security contacts, any immediate gains are likely to be more incremental than the US-brokered Abraham Accords, which created links between Israel and two of the kingdom’s neighbors, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

But the experience of Limor, who qualified for a tourist visa because he holds a non-Israeli passport, points to shifts in public opinion in Saudi Arabia that officials hope will one day lay the groundwork for a formal bilateral relationship.

US officials say it shows significant progress toward a deal that would represent Israel’s ultimate diplomatic prize.

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been a major exporter of Jew-hatred for too many decades,” said Deborah Lipstadt, Washington’s special envoy for combating anti-Semitism, in a speech this month following a visit to the kingdom in June.

“But what I found is something very different, something that has changed dramatically there in recent years.”

Signs of this transformation appeared long before the Abraham Accords pushed by the Trump administration, which Riyadh has so far refused to join.

Saudi textbooks once vilified Jews and other non-Muslims, depicting them as animals and claiming that “disobedience is the hallmark of the Jews.”

But they have been revised for years, as documented by the Israeli non-profit group IMPACT-SE, which monitors textbook content.

At this point, anti-Jewish material “has been largely removed, which is very much to be admired,” the group said in a June report.

The Saudi Ministry of Education did not respond to a request for comment on the textbooks.

Anti-Israeli statements by imams are also “generally rare,” and the Department of Islamic Affairs has encouraged a “rejection of bigotry,” the US State Department said in its latest human rights report on Saudi Arabia.

Mohammed al-Issa, a Saudi cleric who heads the Muslim World League, was commended by Israel in January 2020 after traveling to Poland for events marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.

King Salman received Jerusalem-based Rabbi David Rosen the following month, and during Ramadan that year, the Saudi Arabian-controlled MBC network aired a television program in which a character swept aside the taboo on doing business with Israel.

Since the Abraham Accords were unveiled in August 2020, more examples have surfaced.

Israeli drivers took part in the January 2021 Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia and the Arab News, the kingdom’s main English-language daily, has published Israeli opinion writers.

In March, the state media quoted Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler, who described Israel as a “potential ally”, as a sign that the Saudi leadership no longer had to fear violent counter-reactions to an eventual normalization.

The impact of these moves on public opinion can be difficult to gauge in an absolute monarchy that imposes severe limits on political expression.

There’s little chance that Riyadh will shift its focus to relations with Israel “while ignoring the Palestinian issue,” and that’s not something ordinary Saudis would want either, said Mohammed Alyahya, a fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center University.

“Public opinion has changed, but I don’t think it has changed in a way that people don’t care about Palestine anymore or don’t hold Israel accountable for the crimes it committed,” Alyahya said.

The kingdom’s internal dynamics differ from those of its neighbors, said Brian Katulis of the Middle East Institute in Washington.

“I don’t see a broad source of more openness that you see in places like the Emirates, which are much smaller where you can do interfaith things and have a synagogue. I think it’s slower in a place like Saudi Arabia right now,” Katulis said.

Saudi officials remained silent about possible outcomes of Biden’s visit and did not respond to a request for comment on possible deals related to Israel.

Whatever emerges – like allowing direct flights from Israel to Saudi Arabia for Muslim pilgrims – is likely to end well before full normalization.

That’s perhaps all many Saudis can take at the moment.

“It is impossible for me to go to Israel one day. I don’t like them,” said Abo Rashed, an auto parts dealer in the capital, who described the Israelis as “occupiers.”

“But the government knows better. She will choose what is best for the people and the country.”