Israel and Saudi Arabia Are Trading Places

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has put his country’s worst religious extremists in jail, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has put his country’s worst religious extremists in his cabinet.

Netanyahu is trying to make Israel more like the worst of the old Saudi Arabia and M.B.S. to make Saudi Arabia more like the best of the old Israel.

M.B.S., with his laser focus on economic growth after several decades that he has described Saudi Arabia as having been “sleeping,” has unleashed the most important social revolution ever in the desert kingdom — and one that is sending shock waves around the Arab world. It has reached a point where the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are now putting the finishing touches on a formal alliance that could isolate Iran, curb China’s influence in the Middle East and peacefully inspire more positive change in this region than the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan ever did militarily.

The crown prince wants as peaceful a region as possible, and a Saudi Arabia as secure from Iran as possible, so he can focus on making Saudi Arabia a diversified economic powerhouse.

The result of Netanyahu’s alliance with the far right is that Israel can’t take advantage of the tectonic shift in Saudi Arabia — with its offer to normalize relations with the Jewish state and open a road for Israel with the rest of the Muslim world — because doing so would require Israel to pursue a pathway with Palestinians to create two states for two indigenous peoples.