MBS wants to permanently divorce Hamas – and Israel is the final wedge

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Earlier this month, a Saudi terrorism court sentenced Hamas’ representative in the kingdom, Dr. Mohammed al-Khudari, to 15 years in prison. Al-Khudari, who is 82, was among 69 Palestinians and Jordanians who were sentenced up to 22 years on charges of alleged links with an unnamed “terrorist” group.

This news came as a major shock to Hamas, whose leaders have recently been optimistic that the organization’s relationship with Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman might turn over a new leaf. A few days before the ruling, Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh warmly welcomed the announcement that a date has been set for the sentencing, confident that a royal decree will close the case.

Boosting this hopefulness was the fact that in July, Saudi television channel Al-Arabiya extended a rare invitation to Hamas diaspora chief Khaled Meshal for an interview, after the kingdom completely shut out the movement for years. Meshal made an appeal to mend bilateral relations and even condemned Iranian attacks on Saudi Arabia. Meshal received the interview request a month after Egypt’s President Abdel-Fatah Al-Sissi had conveyed a plea from Hamas to MBS, when the two met in Sharm Al-Sheikh, to release Hamas prisoners and renew ties.

The harsh and politically motivated sentencing led to speculations that it might have been either retaliation against Ismail Haniyeh’s attendance of the Iranian president’s inauguration ceremony earlier this month, or an explicit signal of good faith toward Israel’s new government. Hamas leaders are increasingly inclined toward the latter explanation after Israel’s regional cooperation minister, Esawi Freige, said in an interview on the Alhurra television channel that Israel is now in direct contact with Saudi Arabia. Moreover, at the Olympics last month, a Saudi judoka, Tahani Alqahtani, was the only player to be ordered by an Arab government to face an Israeli player. Alqahtani got spectacularly battered within seconds but earned the kingdom the sportswashing moment its rulers craved.

After MBS grabbed the throne from Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef – with Jared Kushner’s help – and later, as MBS was implicated in the brutal killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the young crown prince became desperate to strengthen relations with Israel as a way of maintaining good standing in Washington. He increasingly distanced himself from the Palestinians in general and Hamas in particular, and unleashed a vicious troll army to attack both and adulate Israel at every turn. MBS even reportedly asked Netanyahu in 2018 to pound Hamas and Gaza to divert attention from the Khashoggi murder.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh shakes hands with the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, General Hossein Salami, during the swearing in ceremony for Iran’s new president in Tehran earlier this monthATTA KENARE – AFP

In April 2019, MBS sent state troops to round up all of Hamas’ representatives and sympathizers and put them in jail, after halting all contact with the movement. The organization was initially silent on the matter, hoping to resolve the situation via discreet diplomacy. It gave up after six months and asked human rights group to step in, signaling a complete breakdown in the relationship with the Saudis.

Until MBS seized power, Hamas had enjoyed a relatively solid relationship with Saudi Arabia’s rulers. In 1988, a year after the movement’s founding, the head of Saudi intelligence invited then Hamas political chief Moussa Abu Marzouk to meet in Jeddah, and offered financial assistance to the group while expressing hope that Hamas would avoid militant actions.

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When then PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat voiced support for Saddam Hussein’s Kuwait invasion in 1990, Hamas condemned it, earning it greater Saudi support. During the 1991 Gulf War, Abu Marzouk was invited again to the kingdom, where the Saudis discussed opening a contact office for Hamas and vowed financial and political support, which Hamas interpreted as a bid to empower it to replace the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people.

In a 1992 meeting with Hamas, the Saudis made explicit that they recognize the PLO as the sole representative of Palestinians, support a just peace with Israel, but won’t normalize relations until the conflict is resolved. Meanwhile, Hamas was given a lump sum in financial support and the Saudis opened a secret Hamas office in the kingdom headed by Dr. Mohammed al-Khudari, who oversaw direct communications with Riyadh and arranged regular meetings with Saudi officials until his arrest in 2019.

That same year, 1992, Hamas leaders exiled by Rabin to Lebanon’s Marj al-Zohour managed to substantially improve their relations with Syria and Iran, and a Hamas office was opened in Tehran. The Saudi-Hamas relations survived the effort to maintain positive ties with two opposing camps. Neither was the relationship dramatically impacted by the Saudi support for the post-Oslo Palestinian Authority and the peace process with Israel, which Hamas diametrically opposed.

Saudi rulers sought to increase their domestic popularity for decades through their support for the Palestinians, whether genuine or performative, while their pragmatic support for Hamas appealed to certain religious circles as an embrace of resistance and Jihad.

Saudi King Abdullah meets Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas leader Khaled Meshal and Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh in Mecca in 2007, as part of reconciliation talks.AP

Despite fluctuations and setbacks, the Saudi-Hamas relationship for decades entailed privileged direct contacts with Saudi intelligence chiefs, including Turki al-Faisal and the incumbent Khalid Humaidan; occasional meetings with kings and sporadic government financial support (for instance, King Fahd once gifted Hamas 5 million riyals [$1.35 million] delivered by his son Abdul-Aziz, while King Abdullah gifted the group 10 million riyals [$2.7 million] delivered by his son Mut’ib). Al-Khudari and other Hamas members were permitted to raise funds for the movement on Saudi soil, which then turned into the main charge brought against them in the recent trial: financing terror groups.

When Hamas won the 2006 parliamentary election and its government was boycotted internationally, Saudi Arabia pledged to remain one of the largest financial supporters of the Palestinians and invited Hamas Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar to visit the kingdom. King Abdullah later worked tirelessly to bridge the divide between Fatah and Hamas in the Mecca reconciliation agreement.

Five months after the agreement, Hamas took over Gaza, leading to a significant strain in its relations with the Saudis, who took the PA’s side. Although King Abdullah pledged $1 billion to Gaza’s reconstruction in 2009, he turned down multiple requests from Hamas to meet him. A leaked 2010 letter from Hamas’ chief to King Abdullah showed how hard the movement was trying to reach the king. But the level of contact was reduced to meetings with Saudi intelligence or the foreign minister at best.

The Arab Spring put the Saudi-Hamas relations at critical crossroads, as the region became polarized between the Muslim Brotherhood trying to seize power democratically and the old guard trying to secure or regain their thrones.

After General Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi overthrew – with full Saudi and Emirati support – the elected Muslim Brotherhood president in Egypt, Gulf regimes began to ruthlessly crack down on branches of the brotherhood in their countries. Hamas’ ideological affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood complicated its relations with the Saudis, who declared the movement a terrorist organization in 2014. Saudi charities were increasingly barred from aiding Hamas and the organization’s financial manager, Maher Salah, was among those arrested by the Saudis on charges of money laundering and financially aiding Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.

A demonstrator dressed as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman protesting outside the Saudi Embassy in Washington, demanding justice for murdered dissident Jamal Khashoggi.JIM WATSON – AFP

When King Salman ascended to the throne, Hamas’ top leaders secured a meeting with him and his over-ambitious son in 2015. The meeting went so well that Maher Salah was released. The movement’s optimism, however, soon dissipated as MBS cracked down on their presence in the kingdom on his journey to absolute power.

The decisive game changer for the Saudi-Hamas relations was Israel, which succeeded in bringing about a complete disconnect between the two.

Hamas sensibly avoided escalation after the harsh sentencing of its members, and its statement on the issue was noticeably mild, in order to signal to MBS that they are still hopeful they could bridge their differences. However, divorcing Hamas irreversibly seems to be part of the dowry MBS is offering Israel’s government for closer not-so-clandestine relations in a bid to protect his throne and bolster his regional power.

Israel seems thrilled to see the rift in Saudi-Hamas relations and Saudi-Palestinian ties in general, which the Israeli government and Trump’s team helped expand.

MBS, who strongly believes the way to Washington D.C. starts in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, is keen to gain impunity that would shield him from the consequences of his wrongdoing, such as Khashoggi’s killing. He believes that presenting himself as Israel’s closest ally in the Middle East would garner him the sympathy of pro-Israeli Republican and Democratic leaders in necessary to render his reign indispensable to D.C.

MBS and Israel seem to be ignoring that an alliance that is based on throwing the Palestinians under the bus will be seen in the Arab street as an alliance between an authoritarian monarch and an apartheid regime. This would exacerbate both anti-Israeli sentiments and rage against repressive Arab rulers that could eventually explode.

Muhammad Shehada is a writer and civil society activist from the Gaza Strip and a student of Development Studies at Lund University, Sweden. Twitter: @muhammadshehad2