While Saudi Arabia’s King Salman seems to trust his son, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, with most policy decisions, the two seem to differ when it comes to the Palestinians: the king’s statements seem much more supportive of their position than the prince’s. This difference, writes Haisam Hassanein, reflects a deeper generational divide in Saudi public opinion. (Free registration required.)

Older Saudis grew up in the 1950s and 1960s during the heyday of Arab nationalism, and its embrace of the Palestinian cause. . . . While the Saudis never fully embraced Arab nationalism, they adopted the Palestinian cause to preempt attacks . . . from their arch-opponents, Arab nationalists. . . . However, the younger generations, characterized and led by Mohammad bin Salman and his close ally Mohamed bin Zayed—the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and the primary driver of the United Arab Emirates’ foreign policy—[don’t share this view]. . . .

[The two princes] realize that Palestinians in general are not . . . supporters of Saudi and Emirati interests with regard to checking the power of political Shiite Islamists, most notably Iran, and Sunni political Islamists, primarily the Muslim Brotherhood. . . . [O]ver the last few years, their position has been increasingly adopted first by younger elites and then more broadly, not least as Saudi Arabia itself has come under missile attack from Iranian proxies. . . .

[T]he younger Gulf generations . . . believe it is [most] likely that a fully independent Palestinian state would itself be hostage to radical forces and would in fact become an extreme source of instability in the region. [Indeed, the two princes] believe that establishing a Palestinian state would mean handing Iran and Sunni political Islamists another Arab capital to control and influence. Iranian influence among Palestinian groups has solidified over the years, and the crown princes’ assessment is that it is irreversible. [They] are not foolish enough to lobby for and fund the establishment of a state that would most certainly be an Iranian client state. . . .

Despite this, many Western policymakers still fantasize about the idea that the Gulf countries could provide money to create and develop a Palestinian state—indeed, this is reportedly one of the founding principles of the Trump-Kushner peace plan. That is never going to happen. Those who actively dictate policy in the Gulf are convinced that every dollar the Saudis give to the Palestinians will ultimately go to Iran. The Saudis and Emirates are likely to promise to provide financial assistance in public, but U.S. policymakers should not believe that they would ever deliver when push really comes to shove.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.