Saudi Journalist: We Must Advance Peace with Israel

With Israel prospering “more than all the Arabs put together,” the Arabs have “a greater need for peace,” a Saudi journalist posited recently. 

By: United with Israel Staff

A growing number of Saudi opinion makers are calling on the Kingdom to establish ties with Israel and essentially make the covert collaboration between the two countries official.

Most recently in an article published on Sunday in the Saudi government daily Al-Yawm, Saudi journalist Sukina Meshekhis called on the Arab countries to “take bold steps, including certain concessions,” in order to advance peace with Israel, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported.

She wrote that peace is a supreme human aim for which all peoples yearn, but that in order to achieve it there is a need for concessions and sacrifices.

Noting that throughout history there have been many conflicts among various countries, she stated that all of them eventually ended, no matter how terrible they were.

She pointed out that the Arabs have missed too many opportunities to make peace with Israel, and this is stopping them from developing and advancing, adding that this is why she is calling on them to leverage the agreements that some Arab countries have signed with Israel – the Egypt-Israel Camp David Accords, the Israel-Jordan peace treaty, and the Oslo Accords – into an opening for promoting a comprehensive peace.

Practical and Serious Thought on Peace

“Since the conflict countries [i.e., the countries neighboring Israel] are in a state of peace with it, this opens up many doors that used to be closed [and allows us] to give practical and serious thought to moving into the stage of peace, in a way that will end the conflict,” Meshekhis wrote.

She added that the collective interest of the Arabs today “requires rapprochement and understandings with Israel,” and therefore they must be more pragmatic.”

“We never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity, and therefore we remained in square one, while time kept marching on, along with many political and economic interests [we failed to realize]. Israel too continues to develop and to prosper on the political, economic, scientific and military planes more than all the Arabs put together. So which [side] has a greater need for peace? It is we Arabs who need peace,” she underscored.

“Peace, rather than war, is our fundamental problem, and therefore our collective interest requires rapprochement and understandings with Israel. We must not remain hostage to the rhetoric of hostility and unhelpful conflict… it behooves us to be more pragmatic in our perception of peace and to end the many losses that wind up in the abyss of oblivion,” she concluded.

This is not the first article in the Saudi press favoring improved relations with Israel. In a number of recent reports, MEMRI has noted the increased number of Saudi intellectuals, journalists, and commentators expressing public support for Israel and even calling for peace and “normalization” with it.