WP :
As Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman tries to escape consequences for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, it has been revealing to see who has stepped forward to help him out. There have been fellow Arab dictators, such as Egypt’s Abdel Fatah al-Sissi. There have been cynical opportunists, like Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Then there’s Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of a nation whose right to exist has yet to be recognized by Saudi Arabia. You wouldn’t think Israel, in contrast to every Western democracy, would be explicitly endorsing a latter-day version of Saddam Hussein — a man so toxic that even K Street lobbyists are rejecting his money. And yet Netanyahu is emerging as Mohammed bin Salman’s friend-in-need.
For a month after Khashoggi disappeared inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, the Israeli government was conspicuously silent. Then, a day or two after it was reported that Netanyahu had phoned the White House to lobby for Mohammed, he spoke up: While “what happened in the Istanbul consulate was horrendous, and should be duly dealt with,” he said, “it’s very important for the stability of the world . . . that Saudi Arabia remain stable.”
In case there is some doubt what it means to “duly deal” with the strangling and dismemberment of a journalist by a team of 15 thugs, Israel’s ambassador in Washington, Ron Dermer, was more clear: It means, he said, that the United States should “not throw out the prince with the bathwater.”
Why throw a lifeline to this killer? For Netanyahu, the Khashoggi crisis threatens to undo a carefully constructed regional strategy built around the 33-year-old Saudi crown prince — and President Trump. The idea is to forge a de facto alliance between Israel and the Middle East’s new generation of Sunni dictators, united against Iran — and to enlist the United States to provide muscle. As a side benefit, Mohammed would support a Trump Middle East peace plan that, while yet to be unveiled, seems to amount to coercing Palestinians into accepting Israel’s terms.
Until Khashoggi’s disappearance, everything was going smoothly: Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal with Iran and restored economic sanctions; cut off U.S. aid to Palestinian refugees in Gaza while moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem; and resumed U.S. support for a Saudi bombing campaign against Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen that has killed tens of thousands of civilians. Netanyahu was meanwhile invited to visit Oman, a Saudi ally.
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