Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is not known for subtlety. Last month, he lived up to that reputation.
“If Saudi Arabia tells us ‘normalization in exchange for a Palestinian state,’ friends – no thank you. Keep riding camels in the desert in Saudi Arabia, and we will continue to develop with the economy, society, and state, and the great things that we know how to do,” he said at a conference.
Were the Saudis inclined to respond in kind, one could imagine a senior adviser in Riyadh muttering something along the lines of: “If Israel expects normalization without a pathway to a Palestinian state, then no thank you. Let them keep drowning in their political chaos – we’ll keep building megacities out of the desert.”
A fictional line, yes, but one that captures a deeper truth: Smotrich may treat normalization dismissively, but for much of Israel’s security and diplomatic establishment, a breakthrough with Riyadh is the crown jewel. For Saudi Arabia, however, Israel is not the crown. The real prize lies elsewhere – in Washington, not Jerusalem.
That is the unspoken backdrop to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to the White House on Tuesday, his first in more than seven years and the first since the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Israel sees normalization with the Saudis as the “big one,” the key diplomatic breakthrough that would reshape Israel’s place in the region. Riyadh sees it as an optional add-on.
What Saudi Arabia truly wants is a fortified strategic partnership with the United States – upgraded defense guarantees, the ability to purchase next-generation American aircraft, and American backing for a civilian nuclear program. If it can secure those benefits without giving Israel normalization, the Saudis would be perfectly content.
And they have reason to believe that might just be possible.
Riyadh takes notice of Qatar's level of protection from US
When Israel struck Hamas leaders in Doha in September, US President Donald Trump responded with an executive order that essentially upgraded Qatar’s status, declaring that any attack on Qatari territory or critical infrastructure would be viewed as a threat to American security.
Riyadh surely took notice. If Qatar could receive this level of protection from the US, why couldn’t the Saudis? And if
Qatar could secure upgraded assurances despite openly hosting Hamas leaders, why should Saudi Arabia only receive similar guarantees if it normalizes with Israel?
Before the October 7 massacre, MBS had begun cautiously preparing the Saudi public for the idea of ties with Israel.
Israeli commentators were allowed to appear on Saudi television; editors at Saudi outlets began acknowledging Israel’s economic and technological strengths.
But the Israel-Hamas War upended that trajectory. For over two years, Saudi and Arab screens have been filled with images of destruction in Gaza, fueling a public mood intensely hostile to Israel.
According to a poll from the Doha- and Istanbul-based Harmoon Center for Contemporary Studies, opposition to normalization with Israel in Saudi Arabia soared from 38% in 2022 to 68% in 2024.
Whatever groundwork MBS had laid evaporated. Riyadh today has no domestic support to normalize with Israel unless the payoff from Washington is enormous.
THE QUESTION now is what is Washington prepared to offer – and how hard Trump is willing to push – to make normalization happen? Trump wants the Saudi-Israel breakthrough as the jewel of an expanded Abraham Accords. His rhetoric about “peace in the Middle East for the first time in 3,000 years” hinges on Saudi participation.
But Trump also wants – and needs – a smooth partnership with the Gulf’s most powerful state. And Saudi Arabia knows its leverage. Its sovereign-wealth fund has invested billions of dollars in projects linked to Trump’s business world. It pledged $600 billion in US investments before Trump’s visit to Riyadh in May. MBS is not exactly going to Washington as a supplicant.
Where this visit becomes even more complicated – and where Israel should be paying very close attention – is the regional rivalry shaping every conversation about Gaza’s “day after.”
The Middle East has, in practice, split into two competing Sunni camps: the Saudi-UAE axis, which is hostile to political Islam and views Hamas as a dangerous expression of it; and the Qatar-Turkey axis, which not only supports Hamas politically but aspires to a larger role in Gaza’s future.
Trump is trying to play all sides of this divide. He has cultivated close ties with Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, while also maintaining warm relations with Qatar and Turkey. He has not ruled out a significant Turkish-Qatari role in Gaza’s postwar reality, even though that vision clashes directly with Israel’s interests and what the Saudis and Emiratis want.
For Riyadh, a Gaza future shaped by Ankara and Doha is a strategic nightmare. Qatar’s patronage of Hamas threatens the Saudi project of marginalizing Islamist currents at home. Turkey’s regional ambitions threaten Saudi leadership of Sunni Arab politics.
Riyadh and Abu Dhabi want Gaza reconstruction to run through them – not through their ideological competitors.
They want a more technocratic, Arab-nationalist, anti-Islamist order. Turkey and Qatar want the opposite: a role for Hamas, or at least for actors friendly to its worldview.
Trump’s dilemma, therefore, is not merely how much pressure to apply to the Saudis on normalization; it is about navigating two competing Sunni alliances, both of which he sees value in courting.
A Gaza plan that leans heavily on Qatar and Turkey would alienate Riyadh; a plan that elevates Saudi Arabia and the UAE would undermine Trump’s outreach to Doha and Ankara.
For Israel, the implications are sobering. Jerusalem has long assumed that Saudi Arabia “needs” Israel to unlock American concessions. That assumption no longer holds.
If the US can provide Qatar with a security upgrade, there is no inherent reason it cannot offer something similar to the Saudis. If Washington views the Saudi partnership as strategically essential – and sees normalization as “nice to have” rather than a prerequisite – Israel may find that its bargaining leverage is far more limited than it once imagined.
Riyadh has made its position clear: no normalization without what it calls a “credible pathway” to Palestinian statehood. It is not demanding a state tomorrow. But it does want something tangible it can point to.
Israel’s current coalition will not provide that, with Smotrich’s camel line a clear indication.
But it is not only Smotrich. The Israeli public, reeling from the October 7 massacre, is in no mood to entertain replicating the mini-Palestinian state that existed in Gaza in Judea and Samaria. The question is whether some creative formula can bridge this significant gap.
If not – if that gap is too wide to bridge – Jerusalem should brace for an uncomfortable possibility: that the Saudis walk away from this trip to Washington with much of what they want – deeper American guarantees, advanced weapons, and nuclear cooperation – without giving Israel the normalization it craves.
The real question, then, is not only whether Israel wants this normalization, but how far Trump is willing to press both sides to achieve it. By the time MBS leaves Washington at the end of the week, we should all have the answer.