Saudis are overwhelmingly against ties with Israel, polls show
A new poll has found that 96 percent of Saudis believe that Arab countries should cut all ties with Israel to protest the war in Gaza, posing a significant challenge to the The pressure from the Biden administration for Saudi Arabia to establish diplomatic relations with Israel.
According to the poll, 40 percent of Saudis had a positive attitude toward Hamas, compared to 10 percent in a poll several months before the start of the war. Only 16 percent of Saudis surveyed in the poll said Hamas should stop calling for Israel’s destruction and accept the creation of Palestinian and Israeli states side by side — the “two-state solution” to the conflict that the Saudi government publicly supports .
The poll from the Washington Institute for Near East Policya generally pro-Israel research organization, surveyed 1,000 Saudis from November 14 to December 6.
Although Saudi Arabia has become more autocratic over the past eight years, analysts say the country’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, must still take public opinion into account when weighing decisions.
Before the war—when American-brokered efforts to broker a “normalization” deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel seemed to be accelerating—American political analysts, American officials, and some Saudi officials had argued that younger Saudis tended were less concerned with the Palestinian cause than with the Palestinian cause. earlier generations and might therefore be more receptive to the idea of ties with Israel.
It’s unclear how true that was, given the lack of regular, reliable polling in Saudi Arabia – and given the climate of fear created by The level of political repression is deepening under Prince Mohammed. Since the start of the war in Gaza, vocal support for the Palestinian cause and antipathy toward Israel have been widespread among Saudis of all ages.
The positive views of Hamas that emerged from the poll, while still a minority, are notable given that Saudi citizens can be prosecuted for sympathizing with the Palestinian armed group, which the October 7 attacks on Israel.
In September, shortly before the war began, Prince Mohammed said in a television interview that talks between Saudi and US officials were going well “closer every day” to a deal in which Saudi Arabia would recognize the state of Israel for the first time.
Saudi officials had insisted on this major concessions from the United States – including access to American nuclear technology and American security guarantees – in exchange for normalizing ties with Israel, striking a trade-off between potential public opposition to the deal and the political gains it could bring.
A Washington Institute poll found that 95 percent of Saudis did not believe Hamas civilians killed in his attacks, which killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel, most of them civilians – including many women and children – according to Israeli officials. It is relatively common for Arabs to believe that reports of civilian deaths are Israeli propaganda.
In contrast, the focus for most Saudis and other Arabs was on the Israeli army’s siege of Gaza, including a bombing campaign that was one of the most intense this century and that has killed about 20,000 Palestinians, according to health authorities in Gaza.
In the poll, 87 percent of Saudis said the war had shown “that Israel is so weak and internally divided that it can one day be defeated.”
Only 5 percent agreed that Saudis should “show more respect for the world’s Jews and improve our relations with them.”
However, the poll showed that a majority of Saudis supported a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over a military approach. Three-quarters said they supported the idea of an Arab diplomatic effort to broker peace between the two sides.