About that Saudi-Israeli handshake
A seemingly spontaneous Saudi-Israeli handshake at a European conference on security is mushrooming into what al-Quds al-Arabi calls an "unprecedented" public debate about the extent of official Arab-Israeli relations. The story isn’t especially interesting on its merits: Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon (most recently in the news for an ill-considered snub of the Turkish ...
A seemingly spontaneous Saudi-Israeli handshake at a European conference on security is mushrooming into what al-Quds al-Arabi calls an "unprecedented" public debate about the extent of official Arab-Israeli relations. The story isn't especially interesting on its merits: Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon (most recently in the news for an ill-considered snub of the Turkish ambassador) seized the opportunity at a security conference in Munich the other day to maneuver former Saudi intelligence chief Turki al-Faisal into an unprecedented public handshake.
While it might not seem like much, the picture of the handshake has rocketed through Arab politics and has become the focal point for an unusually blunt public discourse on the well-known reality of official Arab ties to Israel. The way the story is playing out is an object lesson in the power of publicity in Arab politics and in the limits of the much-mooted new "alliance" between Arabs and Israel against Iran. It shows both that many Arab leaders are indeed perfectly willing to work with the Israelis, but also that the political costs of this in the Arab sphere remain high --- and that Israel's policies towards Gaza and the Palestinians really do have a cost even if Arab leaders themselves don't seem to much care.
For the Netanyahu government, the handshake was something of a coup. It allows Israel to claim that its diplomatic isolation is less than it appears, and that the costs of their polices towards Gaza and the Palestinians are less than believed. It offered a rare glimpse of the possibility of normalization with the Arabs at a time when a sense of siege prevails. It reinforces the popular Israeli and American narrative that the Arabs are moving towards alignment with Israel in the face of a common Iranian threat, and that the immobilized peace process does not stand in the way.