There is even talk of a new Israeli-Saudi “axis”, an alliance of two countries who feel exposed and abandoned by Obama’s America; partners, perhaps, to a “grand bargain”, that includes both a united strategic front against Tehran and, if one wants to speculate, an explanation for what is being described by some well-placed sources as Netanyahu’s surprising flexibility on the Israeli-Palestinian track and, who knows, willingness to reconsider the abandoned Saudi peace initiative.

Of course, Saudi Arabia arrived at its newfound common ground with Israel from a completely different point of departure. It opposed the Arab Spring all across the board for fear that the virus of democratization would ultimately spread and infect Saudi Arabia itself. Riyadh, in fact, did its active best to undermine the popular insurrection altogether: it helped Bahrain suppress Shi’ite protests; supported Islamists over moderates in Tunisia; opposed the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Cairo but backed the more radical and Salafist Al-Nour party; conducted a fierce tug of war with Qatar that contributed to the disintegration of the Syrian rebel movement and enabled its infiltration by Al-Qaida. And it opposes Iran, inter alia, as a spearhead of the age-old Sunni-Shi’ite confrontation that Israel once wanted no part in.

Not to mention the fact that Saudi Arabia remains one of the most autocratic, repressive, human-rights abusing countries in the world, where women are subjugated, rape victims lashed, LGBT’s persecuted, foreign workers enslaved, petty robbers dismembered, common criminals executed and practitioners of any religion other than Islam outlawed, hounded and, if they are foreign, ultimately expelled.

Read the article in full at Haaretz