MJ Rosenberg has a fascinating column this week on a potential new axis in the Middle East: Saudi Arabia and Israel… Rosenberg calls for, egad, creative thinking on the Bush Administration’s part to seize the moment on a Palestinian state.
The new ingredient is that the Saudis now view Israel as facing the same threat they now confront: Shiite radicalism. While before they simply said that Israel should just do whatever the Palestinians want to end the conflict, now they are saying that they will work with both Israelis and Palestinians to craft a solution.
That is the meaning of the meeting which Yediot Ahronoth reports took place two weeks ago between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and a top Saudi official. Yediot reports the meeting took place in Jordanian King Abdullah’s Amman palace late at night… The only details Yediot has are these: “The main issue was the threat posed by Iran’s attempts to obtain nuclear weapons and spread Shiite terror in the region. Olmert and his hosts reached an understanding at the meeting that secret intelligence cooperation should be continued against the Iranian threats.”
…If these reports are correct, and most observers believe they are, the Saudis are working with Israel to defuse the greatest single threat to Israel’s existence, that of a nuclear Iran. This is a development that would have been unimaginable a few years ago when Saudi Arabia was the de facto head of the rejectionist front.
