An Israeli diplomat exposed the intentions of Mohammed bin Salman upon assuming the throne after his father, the king, by quickly declaring normalization with Israel.
The former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Dore Gold, said that Israeli-Saudi relations will be affected by transferring power from King Salman Abdul Aziz to his son, Crown Prince Muhammad, and will culminate in the announcement of normalization.
The Israeli diplomat confirmed to the New York Sun that bin Salman is more determined than his father to put the kingdom on a new path in its relationship with Israel.
He explained that Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s recent visit to Bahrain indicates that the official normalization agreements’ final goal will open the door to Saudi normalization.
He highlighted that Israeli athletes are routinely embraced by their Arab competitors, claiming that Arab athletes lose matches instead of competing against Israelis.
The Israeli diplomat gave an example of this, with the overwhelming victory of the Israeli judoka over Saudi Arabia, Tahani Al-Qahtani, after she was forced to fight instead of withdrawing.
The Israeli media highly praised the policy of Mohammed bin Salman, noting that it replaces the identity of Saudi Arabia and is pushing the way for public normalization between the Kingdom and Tel Aviv.
ِAn article for the Hebrew government channel 12 stated that bin Salman “is replacing the identity of Saudi Arabia, and no country does such a thing at all. It is a sudden and comprehensive change, and it seems that he is intent on replacing both the flag and the national anthem.”
The channel stated that bin Salman “is trying to isolate the Kingdom from Islamic law, and he wants to raise a new flag that does not highlight his affiliation to Islam, and he also wants to highlight the ancient civilization in the land of the Kingdom, so that he urges his archaeologists to find Jewish monuments, to integrate Judaism into the local culture.”
The article stated, “everyone realizes that things have one meaning. Attempting to sever the kingdom’s association with the religious and extremist Wahhabi current reinforced discrimination against women and the prohibition of alcohol and led to several thousand amputations of hands and feet as required by Islamic Sharia.”
Mohammed bin Salman seeks to undo 250 years of partnership between his family dynasty, which arose in the early 18th century from a miserable exile in Kuwait until it gradually occupied most of the Arabian Peninsula and the descendants of the strict and extremist spiritual guru Abd al-Wahhab who controlled the religious establishment until Close to the predatory institution police.
Throughout the ages, Saudi Arabia spread the Wahhabi faith worldwide, financed it with vast amounts of propaganda for its transmission, and built thousands of mosques and religious institutes. Wahhabism and Saudi Arabia have always been synonymous.
Mohammed bin Salman now decided that the kingdom was founded on February 22, 1727, the date on which the father of the Ibn Saud dynasty took power in the desert town of Deraa.
The Saudis will now have two “independence holidays” with paid leave at their side – one on February 22 and the other on September 23, commemorating the occupation of the Hejaz region and its sanctuaries in 1932 when Saudi tribal fighters drove out the Hashemite dynasty from which Jordan’s King Abdullah came.
Not only that: The Crown Prince “eliminates” the old, prevailing notion that three Saudi countries rose and fell one after the other, and mentions that there is only one Saudi country that, of course, knew its ups and downs. This means that textbooks need to be rewritten.
If this is the case, “in his opinion,” a new flag should be raised that highlights “Saudi Arabia” at the expense of Islamic affiliation. It is not yet known how the new flag will be formed. The current green flag consists of the verse “There is no god but God, Muhammad is the Messenger of God,” and beneath it is a long sword. But I doubt the sword will survive, the current anthem speaks of loyalty to this green flag, and it will soon be replaced as well.
Mohammed bin Salman is currently leading a propaganda campaign on Twitter. A close journalist, Turki al-Hamad, explicitly explains that this amounts to a break from Wahhabism in the kingdom, and his claim is made: that just as the United States and Britain, at the time, shunned hard-line Christians, so too did Saudi Arabia. Today, Mohammed bin Salman will not let them steal another 30 years of his life.
Sure, Al-Hamd tweets that Wahhabism helped spread the House of Saud from the arid deserts of Najd to the beaches, but its role is over.
It is simply impossible to exaggerate the intensity of the revolution from above that has begun, it will not be easy, and we will see in Saudi Arabia – also in the royal house – a great deal of opposition to the “civilization” of the country, to pushing the clergy into their corners and dwarfing the place of Islamic fanaticism.
If the prince succeeds in his task, it may also have a desirable effect on his relationship with Israel. It is no coincidence that Mohammed bin Salman, in his search for an ancient “Saudi” civilization, urged his archaeologists to find Jewish remains, preferring a synagogue to integrate Judaism into the local culture.