“I’d expect these countries to do an about face and not just have off-the-books contacts, but institute full diplomatic relations.”
It will take countries like Saudi Arabia two full generations of no propaganda to introduce full diplomatic relations with Israel. The Muslims have used Israel as their scarecrow since Israel’s inception. They have placed in the minds of their populace that Israel is behind everything evil that happens. If you get warts, it’s because Israel has put something in the water...that sort of thing. You can’t undo that level of social conditioning in a flash. The people thus conditioned will have to die off first.
In the meantime the Muslim governments will have to find a new exterior focus to blame all of their mismanagement and corruption on. As, I don’t see any of the causes that require an exterior focus going away.
The closest I have seen to normalization where a number of articles that floated the idea that Israel would be a part of the free economic zone that the new SA leader proposed on the Red Sea. I have not seen anything more in several years. That means that the free economic zone either couldn’t get funded or the idea of a Sharia free zone didn’t fly at home in SA. But the many mentions in articles about Israel’s inclusion seemed to be testing the waters. I am guessing it didn’t go well and caused much pushback in the Arab world.
[It will take countries like Saudi Arabia two full generations of no propaganda to introduce full diplomatic relations with Israel. The Muslims have used Israel as their scarecrow since Israel’s inception. They have placed in the minds of their populace that Israel is behind everything evil that happens. If you get warts, it’s because Israel has put something in the water...that sort of thing. You can’t undo that level of social conditioning in a flash. The people thus conditioned will have to die off first.
In the meantime the Muslim governments will have to find a new exterior focus to blame all of their mismanagement and corruption on. As, I don’t see any of the causes that require an exterior focus going away.]
Much of the government propaganda against Israel reflects popular sentiment, and is an attempt to co-opt rather than drive it. At the street and elite levels, Muslims and Arabs are not docile like the citizens of the West. That’s why elite mutinies and popular revolts are a constant worry in Arab capitals. For at least the past century, no Western government has had to worry about coups or armed revolution. That’s not true most places in the Middle East.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_revolution_of_1952
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal_II_of_Iraq#Downfall_and_murder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1963_Syrian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969_Libyan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_Algerian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987_Tunisian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Moroccan_coup_attempt
It’s not a matter of incompetence or corruption. The average Arab has thousands of years of history as a basis for comparison. They recognize and respect the prerogatives of their rulers. They understand that their rulers are kings by another name, complete with grand viziers, etc. The idea that they want democracy is an alien concept superimposed by bleeding hearts upon them (and somehow bought wholesale by both the Bush administration and the American public, as well as, for a time, by the entire world, until the experience of the Iraqi insurgency taught some otherwise).
What they want isn’t democracy - it’s their values and beliefs reflected by their rulers. That’s what those rulers are doing when propagating anti-Israel narratives - convincing their Muslim and Arab citizenry that they are not in league with the evil Jews who have occupied sacred Muslim and Arab land. For these rulers, it’s a matter of self-preservation. With the exception of countries that stood to gain territory at Israeli expense, most Arab rulers have extended little more than lip service towards the cause of making Israel Arab territory once again. But that lip service, incorporating anti-Israel propaganda, is necessary for political and maybe physical survival, much as - while China remains an absolutist tyranny, and perhaps beyond - no Chinese leader can renounce China’s claim to Taiwan and stay in power.