Saudi Arabia spears fierce state media attacks against Netyahu

Saudi Arabia has launched a scathing state media campaign against Benjamin Netanyahu, pointing out a growing frustration in the Royal Court of the State of the Key Gulf with the Israeli Prime Minister and the War in Gaza.

The unusually hostile bombardment, which could only have been published with the approval of the authorities, came after the officials of us and the Israelis spoke with the perspectives that Saudi Arabia normalize relations with Israel, despite the insistence of Riyadh of that this would depend on the establishment of a Palestinian state.

The attack was caused by Netanyahu joking in an interview last week about the creation of a Palestinian state in Saudi Arabia.

After a presenter in Canal 14 of Israel erroneously said that there would be no progress in the normalization of relations between Saudi and Israel Arabia without the establishment of a Saudi state, Netanyahu corrected it by saying: “(does it mean) a Palestinian state “

“Unless you want the Palestinian State to be in Saudi Arabia,” he added. “They have a lot of territory.”

The state media responded fiercely, which reflects the anger that has boiled for months between the senior officials and the public.

A report on the state news channel to Ekhbariya described Netanyahu as a “Zionist and son of a Zionist.” . . who inherited extremism in his genes. ” He added: “The occupation does not have a good face or a ugly face. He has only one face and is Benjamin Netanyahu. “

The Arabiya channel, owned by Arabiya, issued an interview program in which the presenter raised questions about the mental state of Netanyahu. “Maybe it was a case of hallucination?” The anchor asked.

A columnist from The Okaz Daily called the comments of the Israeli Prime Minister “silly and ridiculous”, while the pro -government experts on social networks called Netanyahu the “rotten”, a word game in his name in Arabic.

The Saudi anger has been pushed into light, since Riad is expected to face the pressure of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, to normalize relations with Israel. Like other Arab states, Riad has also been shaken by Trump’s insistence that Palestinians should be forced to leave Gaza.

Saudi Arabia was approaching an agreement to three ways with the Biden administration before Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. The kingdom would have agreed to formal diplomatic relations with Israel in exchange for an American defense pact and assistance with a program nuclear.

The war in Gaza shook those plans. Riad never took out the normalization of the table, but has increased his sentence for Israel’s behavior of his war in Gaza and has hardened his position, insisting that Israel would need to take irreversible steps towards a solution of two states.

In September, the heir prince Mohammed Bin Salman went further, telling the Shura advisory council that the kingdom would not recognize Israel without the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, including Gaza and the West Bank, with this Jerusalem as its capital.

Saudi officials have privately expressed exasperation for what they consider as offensive and presumptive comments of Netanyahu and its extreme right -wing allies, which suggests that the kingdom would not only take displaced Palestinians, but also accept conditions for the normalization much weaker that his declared claim of his declared claim. An independent Palestinian state.

“There is a complete contempt for the statements made by Saudi officials (and this makes the Saudi seem like), basically, they are not credible people, people who are two -sided and very conspirators. It is certainly an indignation, “said Aziz Alghashian, Saudi analyst and director of Research and Geopolitics of Orf Middle East, a group of experts based in Dubai.

“They (Riad) are trying to take this opportunity to give Netanyahu a sample of their own medicine.”

Netanyahu has affirmed that Saudi Arabia would follow the steps of the United Arabic neighbors who, together with Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, established diplomatic relations with Israel in 2020.

Those agreements, sealed during Trump’s first mandate and called Abraham’s agreements, offered insignificant benefits for the Palestinians.

Trump has said that he would like to extend the agreements to include Saudi Arabia, which as the leader of the Muslim world Sunita is considered the key prize.

Prince Mohammed enjoyed strong ties with Trump during his first mandate, and there have been some indications that Riad wants to resume where he left it. The heir prince told the president this month that the kingdom planned to invest more than $ 600 billion in the United States for four years.

But Trump surprised the Arab states saying last week not only that Gaza should be emptied of Palestinians, but also that the United States should take care of the strip. Last week, Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Faisal Bin Farhan, postponed a scheduled trip to Washington after Trump announced his plan, said a person familiar with the matter.

The kingdom also quickly rejected Trump’s plan in a strongly written statement published at 4 am local time, saying: “Achieving lasting and fair peace is impossible without the Palestinian people obtaining their legitimate rights according to international resolutions, as has previously clarified both for the previous and current administrations of the United States. “

Ali Shihabi, a Saudi commentator near the Royal Court, said that “the entire ship goes in the wrong direction now.”

“People expected Trump to come and advance along a two -states track, but Trump has taken it in a completely different direction and Netanyahu is trying to take advantage of that,” he added.

“The Israelis have a powerful public relations machine, and when they continue to say that behind closed doors, the Saudites are giving us a different message, Riad realizes that it has to be much more proactive to dispute it.”

Saudi leadership is also concerned about the anger that the war in Gaza has fed among a generation of Arab young people.

“Saudi officials are certainly explaining the growing public anger among younger Saudi, but also among a younger Muslim population,” said Elham Fakhro, a researcher at the Middle East initiative at the Harvard Kennedy school. “This is another reason why Saudi officials have doubled in the Palestinian state.”

Additional James Shotter reports in Jerusalem and Andrew England in London