Saudi Arabia’s balancing Israel ties and Palestinian solution

Deutsche Welle :
Germany will no longer block the sale of Eurofighter jets to Saudi Arabia and will also deliver other high-tech armaments like the IRIS-T guided missiles. That is despite concerns from within the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s ruling coalition and his own party.
Germany started blocking weapons deliveries to Saudi Arabia in 2018 after the brutal assassination of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi made global headlines and highlighted the country’s human rights violations.
But now, according to a German government press spokesperson, Scholz shares the opinion of German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who has praised Saudi Arabia’s “constructive” position concerning Israel during the current Israel-Hamas conflict.
“The Saudi Arabian air force also employed Eurofighters to shoot down Houthi missiles that were bound for Israel,” government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said in Berlin this week.
The Gulf nation’s “constructive” attitude clearly means more to the German politicians than previous concerns about Saudi Arabia’s role in the war in Yemen, which has resulted in what is often described as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, as well as the various human rights violations that first sparked the ban.
The Germans are not alone in this kind of “realpolitik.” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also found kind words for Saudi Arabia following his visit to Riyadh earlier this week. Blinken said he and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had discussed potential normalization of relations with Israel and that the Saudis still had a clear interest in progressing this.
Blinken’s view seems more positive than that expressed by most Middle East analysts, who perceive a growing distance between Saudi Arabia and Israel, after the Hamas group launched a resistance campaign in Israel on October 7.