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Israel is likely to normalise relations with Saudi Arabia in the coming years despite mounting tensions between the regional powers over the Jewish state’s war in Gaza with Hamas, according to a poll of foreign policy experts.
The survey, conducted by the Atlantic Council, also found that 20 per cent of geostrategists and futurists polled believed the repeatedly failed effort to create a Palestinian state with peaceful relations with Israel was achievable in the next decade.
The findings are a stark contrast with the escalating tensions in the Middle East, where the US and other western countries have increased their military presence after attacks by Iran-backed militias and fears that the Hamas conflict could spread to other countries.
“It indicates an alternative reading of the devastation of the last few months: that in the long run the violence that makes peace seems such a remote possibility could ultimately reinvigorate calls for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” the report said.
The forecasts from some 300 geostrategists and futurists suggest that Israel’s diplomatic isolation could be temporary — and offers outside backing for the Biden administration’s push for an overarching peace deal despite the regional turmoil triggered by the conflict in Gaza.
A clear majority — 60 per cent — of respondents said such a breakthrough could be achieved within the next decade. The survey was conducted in November after the war broke out.
A diplomatic agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia faced long odds even before the Israel-Hamas war, but prospects appear to have dimmed further since the conflict erupted in October.
Israeli forces have killed more than 23,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to Palestinian health authorities. Leaders in the Gulf Arab states have called for an immediate ceasefire.
Senior US officials say that normalisation between Israel and Saudi Arabia would only be possible alongside plans to create a Palestinian state, which Israel’s far-right government has rejected.
“[Normalisation] will require that the conflict end in Gaza, and it will also clearly require that there be a practical pathway to a Palestinian state,” US secretary of state Antony Blinken told reporters in Saudi Arabia this week after meeting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Nearly one in five respondents to the poll also said Israel would establish diplomatic ties with an independent, sovereign Palestinian state by 2034 — an outcome that has eluded diplomats for decades and appeared even less plausible after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, triggering Israel’s devastating response in Gaza.
“The current conflict ultimately could result in a more positive outcome for the region in terms of the ability of the Israelis and Palestinians to address their ongoing division,” said Peter Engelke, the Atlantic Council’s deputy director of foresight who helped to design and interpret the survey. “A minority view, but I think, important enough.”
Meanwhile, half of the respondents to the poll doubted that China would seek to retake Taiwan by force within the next decade, down from 70 per cent last year.
Engelke said the different outlook this year reflected the belief that Beijing had learned from Moscow’s decision to invade and occupy Ukraine, which has embroiled its forces in almost two years of conflict and sparked punitive international sanctions against Russia.
But respondents continued to predict that Russia would experience substantial turmoil, ending as a failed state within 10 years.
