In this episode, recorded during a BICOM media briefing, Daniel J. Levy speaks with Dr Najah Alotaibi and Dr Efrat Sopher about the prospects for Saudi–Israeli normalisation following the Gaza War. They discuss how Saudi Arabia’s social and educational reforms are reshaping public attitudes toward Israel. They also relate to the growing empowerment of women and the importance of grassroots initiatives.
Dr Najah Alotaibi is a Saudi academic, journalist and board member of MENA 2050. Dr Efrat Sopher is an Iranian Israeli security analyst and chair of the Board of Advisors at the Ezri Center for Iran and Gulf States Research at the University of Haifa.
Transcript
(This transcript has been automatically generated by AI — please excuse any potential errors.)
00:00:06:24 – 00:00:40:15
Hello and welcome to the BICOM’s Podcast. I’m Daniel J. Levy, programmes manager, and today is 5th November 2025. Today we’re discussing post-Gaza War Saudi–Israeli normalisation with doctors Najah Alotaibi and Efrat Sopher. Doctor Alotaibi is a Saudi academic, journalist and writer specialising in geopolitics and public diplomacy in the Gulf. She is also a board member of MENA 2050. Dr Sopher is an Iranian Israeli security analyst, predominantly specialising in Iranian foreign policy, its proxies, and relations with Israel.
00:00:40:17 – 00:00:52:10
She also serves as chair of the Board of Advisors at the Chair of the Board of Advisors at the Ezri Center for Iran and Gulf States Research at Haifa University. So, Doctor Alotaibi and Doctor Soffer, over to you.
00:00:52:10 – 00:01:13:23
Well, thank you so much, Daniel, for having us. And thank you to beacon for making this happen. This is something that Maja and I have been hoping to do for a while, and it took your initiative to get us together. So, we’re super, super excited. And we thought we’d let we’d let our friends here in this call in on this recording.
00:01:14:00 – 00:01:43:23
Listen in into some of our conversation. So, Nadia, I’ll let you go ahead and, and, and kind of really introduce us into, into how you’ve seen Israel, how you see Saudi Israeli relations. Tell us thank you, Efrat, and thank you, Daniel, for organizing this. I have to say that I met doctor, right. During one of the Abraham Accords networking events.
00:01:44:00 – 00:02:16:05
And since then, we kept in touch and we were thinking about, you know, having events and panels where we bring Saudi and Israeli academics to speak alongside each other, and share their prospects of Saudi, Israeli relations because we felt like this discussion is dominated by our male colleagues and, you know, don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing against that.
00:02:16:05 – 00:02:53:06
But I believe it’s important to diversify the conversation and includes women perspectives as well. So, thank you so much, Michael, for, helping to make this event possible. I was born and raised in Saudi, and I went to primary school there in the 90s. And for those familiar with the, you know, in geopolitical, social history in Saudi, that period was deeply shaped by the sexual movement.
00:02:53:08 – 00:03:31:13
The sexual movement is the Islamic awakening. It is a combination between the Muslim Brotherhood’s political ideas, with the strict Salafi interpretation of Islam. So, this movement used to advocate the need to implement a strictest, oppression of Islam on aspects of life, whether society, education and even politics. And one of the main ways the secular movement at that time, used to spread these ideas was through the education system.
00:03:31:15 – 00:04:04:05
So as children, we used the absorbed their ideas, for example, and I wrote about this, many times over, textbooks were filled with materials, demonizing other religions, denied demonizing Christians and Jews and even different sects within Islam. Antisemitic ideas were very, very common in the education and Jews in particular were portrayed as the internal enemies of Islam.
00:04:04:05 – 00:04:37:14
And I remember one of the teachers, when I was growing up, used to tell us, well, if you shake a hand with a tree, you will be going straight to hell. So, you can see, how this kind of education and the profound, impact, of this type of education on generation, basically, and how it shaped their views not only about Jews, but even countries with, majority of, Jewish population.
00:04:37:16 – 00:05:18:05
So, yeah, asking me about how my generation views Israel, it was not wholly, positive. But there is, of course, an element, a political dimension to this, favourable view of Israel. Of course, the, you know, the, the ongoing conflict with, you know, with the Palestinians and the Israeli military operation in Gaza, not just now, but for many, many years, this has resulted in a lot of humanitarian crisis and significant civilian casualties.
00:05:18:07 – 00:05:52:07
And as you know, channels like Al Jazeera didn’t exist at that time. So, growing up, we used to see always, you know, we hear the name of Israel always associated with wars, for example, I don’t remember, hearing about Israel, doing that. And I’m not judging here. I’m just, you know, telling you what we grew up seeing and hearing, we don’t hear about Israel, donating to poor countries or not.
00:05:52:09 – 00:06:35:13
All of what we hear about Israel is always conflict. The picture is always in conflict. Constant conflict. And we hear this, we see it on channels like CNN, BBC, as I said, I just I didn’t accept at that time. So, it is an element also of truth of why Saudi’s view is so unfortunately. And of course, you know how Saudi, both the government and the people do feel strongly about the Palestinian case, not just because of the historic ties in the stability of a Palestinian or a state is a strategic foreign policy objective for Saudi.
00:06:35:15 – 00:07:04:08
They need to see a stable region because they can see even those, you know, radical groups, all of the land and all of these guys, always they cite the conflict in Palestine when they want to justify their killing and their violence against anything. So, it is a strategic foreign policy objective to see a two-state solution living in peace.
00:07:04:10 – 00:07:47:08
They want to see Palestinians having the right up to establish in the same way Israel has the right to exist in peace and security. So, yeah, so there’s also, I think, other elements, you know, when I was growing up in, in the Kingdom, I didn’t really, any opportunity to meet an Israeli person in my entire generation, you know, that we didn’t have, you know, we didn’t interact with Israelis, of course, due to the absence of the diplomatic relations between the countries.
00:07:47:10 – 00:08:23:20
And this is a human nature. If you don’t have if you’re not familiar with, you know, a particular country or people, you would never have a positive news about them. Right. And I’m not blaming the Israelis or the Saudis. This was the situation. Okay. And as I said, you know, that, space or like a social space where you interact with people from different faiths is really vital to fostering, you know, understanding and reducing, you know, prejudice.
00:08:23:22 – 00:08:54:06
And as I said, this opportunity was not, available for me, when I was growing up in the Kingdom. It was only until a decade and a half ago when Saudi started to realize that the education system, as you know, contributed to, lots of, you know, negative things in their society, for example, lots of, terrorism.
00:08:54:08 – 00:09:25:15
Incidents happened in the kingdom, and it was driven mainly by hate of the others. I’m sure you remember bin laden was saying, you know, he opposed having any American groups because they are not Muslims. So, so, so the kingdom started to come before the education system because it was, they needed a quick fix to the society and of course, to maintain security and, you know, national security.
00:09:25:17 – 00:10:12:02
So, they started reforming the education system. And, but, you know, alongside doing other programs such as, sending millions and millions of, Saudis, abroad to educate and, you know, my generation, I think, is the most educated generations, in Saudi, most of us are, U.S educated and UK educated. I personally met lots of Israelis for the first time when I moved to London and, I had lots of, academic friends and, you know, even business partners now.
00:10:12:04 – 00:10:52:03
And this is why, you know, initiatives like the Abraham Accords and Mena 2050, all these organizations who are working on a grassroots level, trying to build trust because we do have trust properly. I mean, these organizations are doing an incredible job of being involved and a lot of their events and there, network, and I think somehow, this could lead to, a diplomatic, normalization on a long term.
00:10:52:05 – 00:11:16:16
So, yeah, I think I have spoken a lot here. And I’ll leave this to, now to Doctor Ratched. You can tell us a little bit more about your perspectives. Thank you. Well, thank you so much, doctor. I we I’m so, it was such an intriguing thing to hear about your journey and your story.
00:11:16:18 – 00:11:44:22
And, for me, I was born in Jerusalem, and my family’s roots are, deeply rooted in the Middle East, from Iran and Syria. Bahrain. And so, to me, the Middle East and the Gulf have always intrigued me. And, growing up in Jerusalem weren’t always, learned about the Bible and about Arab lands and about, kind of that world.
00:11:44:22 – 00:12:12:24
But we had never actually studied modern day Saudi Arabia or the Gulf. But when I moved to London at a very young age, that was when I had exposure to, to college women, and men, course. But what I found most intriguing was the stories of Saudi and Emirati women and their social change, their sense of identity.
00:12:13:01 – 00:12:38:22
As a woman, I also couldn’t help looking at the way they looked. Their fashions, they’re the way that religion, affect their appearance. To me, that really resonated. And thanks to that, I became completely obsessed with reading about Saudi women and the numbers of kind of novels and memoirs I’ve read of Saudi princesses. You know, the list is long.
00:12:38:24 – 00:13:03:21
And during my doctoral research is when Saudi Arabia factored kind of higher on the list for me because I wrote about, Israeli Iranian relations before the Islamic Revolution. And there was always, always a Saudi thread to it. Because Saudi Arabia, I think, will always become be intertwined with Iran, with Israel and with the region.
00:13:03:21 – 00:13:47:03
And I think it’s only natural, since Saudi Arabia is so important both strategically and religiously, as the keeper of the two most important sites of Islam. And then so Saudi Arabia was always a strategic counterbalance to Iran and with Iran within the region. Ironically, what is happening very much now is that the nature of the relations, has flipped in a way, Israel and Iran for, for our, for our, listeners had very, very important, very close strategic, relations, which were convert.
00:13:47:05 – 00:14:20:03
And I couldn’t help noticing when, when I was writing my doctoral thesis that the relations Abraham accords with, with the UAE, with Bahrain, and always was founded there had very much a similar kind of resonance to the former relations between Israel and Iran. And then and then the Abraham Accords happened. And overnight, the nature of Israeli relations with a gulf transformed within Israel.
00:14:20:04 – 00:14:52:15
There was this insatiable appetite to find out more about the Gulf, to find out more about this very, very intriguing frontier. And as a British Israeli, which again, I think we’ve got, Toby, another common thread here is the vital role of the United Kingdom in this equation is why I think the UK Abraham Accords group of 2030, or all of all of these groups that can help contain and provide a platform to they by accords.
00:14:52:15 – 00:15:16:20
So, thanks to me, but being a British Israeli, I had the honour and merit of visiting Saudi Arabia, visiting Riyadh and even Medina. I’ve got my own palm tree in Medina, which I hope to, visit sometime soon. And that was thanks to my interfaith work with, the Wolf Institute, who very graciously organized a visit for us.
00:15:16:22 – 00:15:43:03
And there I and also through my academic work at the as we sent and that I was able to Saudi women and men and really get to see how they live, what their outlook is like. And again, as you say, I got to properly meet and make friends. And again, I had many, many moments of, of kind of talking to my host.
00:15:43:03 – 00:16:12:00
There was this amazing Saudi woman in Riyadh who hosted us and, and she said, we look like each other. And I was like, well, maybe my grandmother’s originally from Syria. And she said, well, I’m from Syria originally. And there was this, this coming together, which only happens when people actually meet. What happened also was, was during my visit Iran, factored as a major factor.
00:16:12:02 – 00:16:44:14
I could see that this was front and canter in people’s minds. And there I saw that we have a lot of very important collaboration to do a lot of very, very important work to do. When I landed back in London, there was the Saudi Iranian agreement, which I found most surprising, but very interesting. Again, part of the story of the Middle East, the Gaza War that followed, I think, brought reality very, sharper into focus.
00:16:44:16 – 00:17:20:18
I believe that it also taught us that the unofficial relationships between states and very often the most fragile yet at the same time the most valuable. And that sometimes when and this is a sense of timing, they must remain, secrets to survive and with a hope to have them become official. Of course. The conflict also revealed a gap between Saudi policymakers who continued to show pragmatism and restraint.
00:17:20:18 – 00:18:03:24
When one looks at the statements made by Saudi government officials, it was very, very interesting to again look at their resonance, look at their intention, look at their, lack of will to have anything, escalate it. Also, and you meant this as well. The, demonstrated the need for education. There was a lot of we could see that a lot of social media coming out of Saudi Arabia did indeed show the effect of, Al-Jazeera, the effect of a lot of misinformation that I’m certain, and that the leadership were aware of.
00:18:04:01 – 00:18:29:05
Yet the civil society, the streets, so to speak, hasn’t necessarily caught up with, and so I think it’s, it’s interesting to see. And I love that you said that it was a quick fix because for us, when we think about education, we think it’s a long term. And I think it demonstrates the beauty of what Saudi Arabia can do.
00:18:29:07 – 00:19:00:18
It takes very long-term things, but can, enact them, execute them very, very quickly, which is something that I think especially Mohammed bin Salman is incredibly good at bringing long term things into reality very, very quickly. Looking ahead, I remain cautiously optimistic. Saudi Arabia’s reform agenda is something that is, remarkable. Its empowerment of women, continues.
00:19:00:18 – 00:19:42:06
And a real as is its, pragmatic modernization. The Iranian threat continues to be a factor, to loom quite large, even after the, the 12-day war between Israel and Iran. We have seen, the bringing together of a coalition, especially we saw that during the times when Iran, attacked Israel, where there has been this unofficial coalition, which I, I under some sources say Saudi Arabia was, strategically involved with, again, not something new.
00:19:42:08 – 00:20:28:16
And I, I see again, strategically this tacit cooperation and especially the postwar environment. This is where a more true concrete value can be made. Saudi Arabia’s, role because it has been, that active encountering Islamist extremism can play a very, very valuable role in Gaza’s reconstruction and for, kind of the Palestinian, the Palestinian future to, to have, a fresh, not exceeding the shared security agenda, of course, is also something that will continue.
00:20:28:16 – 00:20:57:11
And I think it would be interesting to have a, to have a conversation about. But I really do believe that the future of Saudi Israeli relations can really provide an anchor alongside with the UAE, with Bahrain. And, and, you know, others who hopefully will, join the Abraham Accords. But there’s a door that’s open between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and I don’t believe that it will be closed.
00:20:57:16 – 00:21:31:06
I do believe that there’s too much opportunity as well as in the non-security sectors in innovation. A Saudi Arabia’s also deeply traditional but really forward looking, looking to diversify its economy and it’s its workforce. So, I really do remain optimistic. And I, I think with dialog and again with partners, this is where the United Kingdom again could play a role in this, in this very new paradigm.
00:21:31:08 – 00:22:03:06
And I think that there’s only it’s a win situation. So, I think, Dan is we happy to open the floor to, to questions? Yeah, absolutely. I think before we open up the floor, I actually have a question for, Doctor Toby that maybe you can follow up with. As if I mentioned Saudi Arabia could have a critical role to play in how, Gaza is reconstructed post Hamas.
00:22:03:08 – 00:22:15:05
What do you think the Saudi involvement looks like? And how could Saudi be involved in the de-radicalisation, and ultimately the transition from Hamas to an alternative governance structure.
00:22:15:05 – 00:23:07:23
I do believe that Saudi Arabia will have a vital role in, the constructing of Gaza. Not just financially, of course, Saudi Arabia, which contributes financially, but also it will use its political weight, its religious weight, to maybe, you know, find out, or suggest a, a moderate, leaders for, Palestine because at the moment, we see the whole world is advocating for a two state solution, which I do agree, it’s that the framework or the three must be a suitable framework for, ending the conflict.
00:23:08:00 – 00:23:40:04
But we always we will also need to focus on the Palestinian leadership who is capable of leading, a Palestinian state at the moment, I completely understand why, Israel and Israelis are quite reluctant in, you know, moving forward with the two state solution because I can’t find any, reliable leaders who can lead the Palestinian state, who are not, radicals or Hamas.
00:23:40:08 – 00:24:05:20
Saudi Arabia and the Gulf state made it very clear that Hamas and any other Muslim Brotherhood groups or any, Islamist group, they will not be part of the solution. However, we, we’re waiting because I, and correct me if I’m wrong, if we don’t have any names on the table that that is able to lead the Palestinian state.
00:24:05:20 – 00:24:42:02
But I believe that any group or any leaders that Saudi Arabia will suggest will be credible enough to lead the Palestinian state. But of course, we need to wait and see, because the kingdom has its power over, I think all the Arab world, and it is a well-respected country. And yeah, it did. They definitely will have to decide, or at least to suggest they support, proper moderate, leadership for Palestine.
00:24:42:10 – 00:25:23:14
Thank you for that. Suffer. Do you have a point to come in? Maybe I do, I, I think that doctor, the tape is made excellent points. And there’s one more of it. As an Iran watcher, I would like to add, I think Saudi Arabia can play, a very vital role here as well in Gaza reconstruction because of, because of Saudi Arabia’s experience with, with radical Islam, with Islamism, and also because Saudi Arabia, I think, is very mindful of, what happens when a power vacuum, lies.
00:25:23:15 – 00:25:49:17
And especially in the Middle East, this is where the Islamic Republic in in many guises, in many ways, tends to try to exert its control and cause instability. And so, this is another point of why I think it’s important for Saudi Arabia to have a voice in, in reconstruction and in the, in post Gaza war, Middle East.
00:25:49:17 – 00:25:56:06
Okay, great. We’ve now come to the end of the main portion. So, duct tape and software, thank you so much for joining.