Operation Al-Aqsa Flood derails normalisation efforts between Israel, Saudi Arabia

The sudden attack launched by Hamas against Israel from the Gaza Strip refocused attention on the Palestinian issue and dealt a blow to the momentum gained in recent months by the American effort to reach a normalisation agreement between the occupation state and Saudi Arabia.

On Saturday, a new war broke out between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, with Hamas calling its military operation Al-Aqsa Flood. The movement launched rockets and carried out raids and captured Israeli towns in the south, with Israel responding by launching raids on the densely populated Gaza Strip, which it has besieged for years.

The operation came on a scale that had not been seen in decades and came the day after the anniversary of the October 1973 war. It also came in light of an effort to reach a normalisation agreement between Riyadh and Tel Aviv, which, if achieved, will be the latest in a series of understandings between Israel and Arab countries in recent years.

The normalisation agreements received strong opposition from Palestinian factions, while Iran said it views these normalisation agreements as a “stab in the back” to the Palestinians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel was in a state of “war” after the Hamas attack, in a radical change from the speech he delivered last month before the United Nations General Assembly, in which he believed that the normalisation agreements with three Arab countries in 2020 launched a new era of peace.

He also stressed at the time the possibility of reaching a “historic” peace agreement with Saudi Arabia, which would be of great importance to Israel given the kingdom’s political and economic weight and its significance in the Arab and Islamic worlds.

READ: Saudi-Israel normalisation seeks the complete surrender of the Palestinians