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| Arabia | |
| Saudi crown prince says Israelis have right to their own land | |
| 2018-04-03 | |
| RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia’s crown prince said Israelis are entitled to live peacefully on their own land in an interview published on Monday in U.S. magazine The Atlantic, another public sign of ties between Riyadh and Tel Aviv appearing to grow closer. Asked if he believes the Jewish people have a right to a nation-state in at least part of their ancestral homeland, Mohammed bin Salman was quoted as saying: "I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land. But we have to have a peace agreement to assure the stability for everyone and to have normal relations." Saudi Arabia - birthplace of Islam and home to its holiest shrines - does not recognize Israel. It has maintained for years that normalizing relations hinges on Israeli withdrawal from Arab lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war, territory Palestinians seek for a future state. "We have religious concerns about the fate of the holy mosque in Jerusalem and about the rights of the Palestinian people. This is what we have. We don’t have any objection against any other people," said Prince Mohammed who is touring the United States to drum up investments and support for his efforts to contain Iranian influence. Increased tension between Tehran and Riyadh has fueled speculation that shared interests may push Saudi Arabia and Israel to work together against what they see as a common Iranian threat. "There are a lot of interests we share with Israel and if there is peace, there would be a lot of interest between Israel and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries", Prince Mohammed added.
Saudi Arabia’s King Salman stresses his support for the Palestinians, a day after the crown prince told The Atlantic that both Israel and the Palestinians have a right to a homeland. The Saudi monarch emphasizes “the kingdom’s steadfast position towards the Palestinian issue and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people to an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital,” state news agency SPA says, according to Reuters. The official Saudi outlet does not mention the crown prince’s remarks on the Jewish state. | |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #6 Good analysis, TW, thanks. |
| Posted by: KBK 2018-04-03 17:42 |
| #5 Probably hudna as well, magpie — we’ll see a decade from now. I was thinking kitman, misleading by telling an incomplete truth. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2018-04-03 17:30 |
| #4 Hudna... |
| Posted by: magpie 2018-04-03 13:14 |
| #3 Reading the Atlantic interview leads me to think that what the crown prince so carefully said is not what the interviewer and subsequent reporters heard. From the interview: Mohammed bin Salman: Islam is a religion of peace. This is the translation of Islam. God, in Islam, gives us two responsibilities: The first is to believe, to do good things, and not bad things. If we do bad things, God will judge us on Judgment Day. Our second duty as Muslims is to spread the word of God. For 1,400 years, Muslims have been trying to spread the word of God. In the Middle East, in North Africa, in Europe, they weren’t allowed to spread the word. That’s why they fought to spread the word. But you also see that, in a lot of countries in Asia—Indonesia, Malaysia, India—Muslims were free to spread the word. They were told, “Go ahead, say whatever you want to say, the people have free will to believe whatever they want to believe in.” Islam, in this context, was not about conquering, it was about peacefully spreading the word. But we know that Islam does not mean peace. It means submission. And in India, at least, Islam was not originally spread by peaceful proselytizing, but by conquest. Raids commenced in the seventh century, resulting first in the Delhi sultinate of the Mamluks, which was subsequently conquered by the Moghuls. Then this bit on Iran (most interviewer interjections removed): MbS: I believe that the Iranian supreme leader makes Hitler look good. MbS: Hitler didn’t do what the supreme leader is trying to do. Hitler tried to conquer Europe. This is bad. MbS: But the supreme leader is trying to conquer the world. He believes he owns the world. They are both evil guys. He is the Hitler of the Middle East. In the 1920s and 1930s, no one saw Hitler as a danger. Only a few people. Until it happened. We don’t want to see what happened in Europe happen in the Middle East. We want to stop this through political moves, economic moves, intelligence moves. We want to avoid war. Goldberg: Is the problem in your mind religious? MbS: As I told you, the Shiites are living normally in Saudi Arabia. We have no problem with the Shiites. We have a problem with the ideology of the Iranian regime. Our problem is, we don’t think they have the right to interfere with our affairs. First of all, Hitler intended to conquer the whole world. Second, the Shiites in Saudi Arabia live in submission to the Sunni rulers, and are discriminated against for their heterodoxy. This, to the prince, is how normal is defined. And then on Israel and the Palestinians: Goldberg: Let’s talk about the broader Middle East. Do you believe the Jewish people have a right to a nation-state in at least part of their ancestral homeland? MbS: I believe that each people, anywhere, has a right to live in their peaceful nation. I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land. But we have to have a peace agreement to assure the stability for everyone and to have normal relations. Goldberg: You have no religious-based objection to the existence of Israel? MbS: We have religious concerns about the fate of the holy mosque in Jerusalem and about the rights of the Palestinian people. This is what we have. We don’t have any objection against any other people. Goldberg: Saudi Arabia has traditionally been a place that has produced a lot of anti-Semitic propaganda. Do you think you have a problem with anti-Semitism in your country? MbS: Our country doesn’t have a problem with Jews. Our Prophet Muhammad married a Jewish woman. Not just a friend—he married her. Our prophet, his neighbors were Jewish. You will find a lot of Jews in Saudi Arabia coming from America, coming from Europe. There are no problems between Christian and Muslims and Jews. We have problems like you would find anywhere in the world, among some people. But the normal sort of problems. If we go back to the definition in Islam of peaceful meaning submission, of normal being submission, then that first answer about Israel does not yield an independent Jewish state. And when we recall that Mohammed married that Jewish woman after the Muslims massacred her entire tribe (the Banu Qurayza) on trumped up charges, including her husband, and that she herself was taken as booty, the whole thing loses entirely the rosy tint with which it is being reported. As for the Western Jews and Christians in Saudi Arabia, it is not legal for Jews to be there, so they lie on their entry forms, while it is illegal for the Christians to worship together — there are regular raids and arrests among the servant class. Expats in their compounds and the soldiers in their camps are necessarily exempt from that. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2018-04-03 10:52 |
| #2 Hope he doesn't get "Sadated" |
| Posted by: Frank G 2018-04-03 08:57 |
| #1 Vow, he must be really scared of Iran. Mind you, it won't last. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2018-04-03 05:14 |