THE ANTI-DEMOCRATIC AXIS:

The attraction between the Wahabi and Zionist leaders may be neither halal nor kosher, but it's nonetheless strong and getting stronger. And it's nothing new.

Their rapprochement is born out of necessity and driven, primarily, by mutual aversion rather than mutual attraction: aversion to the Iranian regime and fear of its expanding influence in the region. As those feelings grow, so does their relationship, in accordance with the realist proverb: my enemy's enemy is my friend.

Indeed, US President Donald Trump noticed with great satisfaction the "really good feeling towards Israel" in Saudi Arabia after his May visit to both countries. Since then he's been godfathering a trilateral arrangement with Israel and Saudi Arabia to confront Iran's "fanatical regime"and its regional aggression.

The Trump administration will fail to produce a credible and comprehensive peace strategy.

 

In an interview with the Saudi publication Elaph earlier this month - yet another sign of normalisation - Israel's military chief of staff, Gadi Eisenkot, explained how Iran threatens both Saudi Arabia and Israel through not one but two parallel (Shia) crescents of influence that cross the region. To the north, one goes through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and to the Mediterranean Sea; and to the south, a second goes through the Gulf region, Yemen and to the banks of the Red Sea.

Marriages of convenience have been built on much less. 

Judging from their public declarations, Israelis are terribly impatient. They want to take the Saudi relationship to a whole new level; they want to "go steady" and they want to come out. And they want it yesterday. Their generation-old (wet) dream of public strategic engagement with moderate Sunni Arab regimes is finally coming true.

Israel has everything to gain and, if it can help it, nothing to lose, from the normalisation of relations with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. It could see its relations improve dramatically with many of the other 55 Muslim-majority countries, just as it saw a huge spike in its diplomatic and economic relations around the world after the 1993 Oslo Accords, including with the likes of Jordan and Qatar. Doha shut down Israel's trade office in the Gulf country in 2009 after the Israeli offensive on Gaza.

For Israel, shared strategic interests and shared goals with Saudi Arabia should suffice to normalise their relations and strengthen their union. 

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