Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Neom, Saudi Arabia, September 2023
Saudi Press Agency / Reuters

Hamas is going to be able to claim very few victories in its war with Israel, but one that it has already notched is an abrupt halt in the momentum toward a U.S.-brokered deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Israeli-Saudi agreement would have broken historic ground, normalizing relations between the two countries, bringing Saudi Arabia more firmly into the U.S. security fold, and eliciting Israeli commitments on the Palestinian issue. In fact, fears of an Israeli-Saudi rapprochement may have been one of the key drivers of Hamas’s October 7 attack.

The war leaves Saudi Crown Prince

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