Extract: The New York Times, Cairo, 17 July 2015
King Salman of Saudi Arabia met Friday with top political leaders of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, in the most striking example yet of the new king’s willingness to work with Islamist organizations long considered foes.
Analysts with close ties to the Saudi royal family said the meeting appeared to reflect King Salman’s determination to rally as much of the Arab world as possible against Iran.
The meeting was held in Mecca and included Khaled Meshal, Hamas’s political leader who lives in Qatar. It was a startling reversal from the approach of the previous king, Abdullah, who had led a campaign to roll back or eradicate the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates around the region.
Analysts suggested Salman might be attempting to pry Hamas away from Tehran.
“The last thing you would expect is that Salman would meet Khaled Meshal,” said Mustafa Alani, an analyst with the Gulf Research Center who is close to Saudi officials, “but now the whole regional environment is changing“.
“Iranian allies need to be dealt with directly in the region,” Mr. Alani said, calling the meeting part of a “comprehensive strategy” to counter Iranian influence.
Saudi leaders have long viewed Brotherhood-style Islamists, especially armed factions like Hamas, as a menace to their family’s power and the kingdom’s stability.
That policy signaled an unusually public alignment of interests between Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other Arab neighbors as they moved into tacit alliance against the shared enemies of Hamas and Iran. In Egypt, the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the general who led the military takeover, has relied on billions of dollars in Saudi aid to keep the economy afloat – and to keep the Brotherhood from power.
King Salman has begun working closely with the Islamist-allied president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The two leaders have joined forces in backing favored Islamist militias fighting the Iranian-backed government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, boosting the rebels’ new gains.
The Saudi-owned news network, Al Arabiya, reported the meeting with Hamas, confirming its veracity. A Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, confirmed that Mr. Meshal met with King Salman; his son Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the defense minister; and Mohammed bin Nayef, the interior minister. Mr. Hamdan said Mr. Meshal had requested an audience with the Saudi king, and the discussion focused on Palestinian issues.
Mr. Hamdan said the parties did not discuss the Iranian nuclear deal but did discuss possible Saudi support for reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, the two dominant but feuding Palestinian factions.
Hamas and the Saudi monarchy both follow the Sunni sect of Islam, while the Iranian government is Shiite. Hamas’s relations with Iran have grown strained since 2011, when it opposed Iran’s support for Mr. Assad, whose forces have killed hundreds of thousands of Sunnis, and displaced millions more in that nation’s civil war. Hamas recently issued a statement supporting the Saudi-led war against the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen.
Mr. Alani, of the Gulf Research Center, said the Saudis intended to undermine any argument that the abandonment of the Arab powers had forced Hamas to become an Iranian client.
“The general idea is that any relationship with Iran is not acceptable, and any justification for that is not acceptable,” Mr. Alani said.
The Islamic State now poses a greater and more direct danger to the kingdom than Hamas, so the kingdom might be seeking to help prop up Hamas against the other Islamist militants. Israel, too, might have a preference for stabilizing Gaza in order to deter more dangerous militants from expanding their foothold.