Saudi Arabia and Israel’s Secret Working Relationship

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Omar Abdulaziz was living in Canada in 2018 and working with journalist Jamal Khashoggi when a message about a package arrived on his phone. The link inside led to Pegasus, spyware made by Israel’s NSO Group. Citizen Lab found that Abdulaziz’s phone had been infected by a Saudi-linked operator. Khashoggi was murdered by Saudi agents later that year inside the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul.

Khashoggi was also the subject of conflicting accounts inside Wikistrat, a private intelligence firm founded in Israel whose founder, Joel Zamel, met senior Saudi officials. Before the murder, a Wikistrat executive told a colleague that the company had recruited  Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi for a Saudi-focused project. Afterwards, he said Khashoggi had only been considered, although the firm later told Forensic News that he had been part of its analyst community for some time. One of the Saudi officials Zamel met was Ahmed al-Asiri, the former deputy head of Saudi Arabia’s General Intelligence Presidency and a former close adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), who was later accused of overseeing the operation against Khashoggi.

By the time Jared Kushner left the White House, Saudi Arabia still had not recognised Israel, though Kushner had helped other Arab governments do so through the Abraham Accords. His new firm, Affinity Partners, received a $2 billion commitment from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and went on to buy 15% of an Israeli vehicle and credit business, while also becoming the largest single shareholder in Israeli insurer Phoenix Financial. Research by AFSC Investigate documents Phoenix’s insurance services to West Bank settlement councils and its investment in Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems. Saudi money could reach those businesses through the fund Kushner controlled, even as recognition remained off the table.

The Saudi-led war had already helped push millions in Yemen towards hunger when seven-year-old Amal Hussain died of malnutrition in October 2018. In November 2025, Sana’a’s Interior Ministry alleged that a joint Saudi, American and Israeli operations room in Riyadh had recruited Yemenis to collect coordinates inside the country. It released video confessions from detainees and described equipment supplied to the alleged network. The Long War Journal reported the allegations, but did not independently establish the claimed command structure. Then, this month, separate reporting described talks through CENTCOM over potential Israeli intelligence assistance to Riyadh against Ansar Allah.

Sana’a says Saudi Arabia recruited spies in Yemen for an operation involving American and Israeli intelligence. Reports of CENTCOM-mediated talks over Israeli assistance to Riyadh give that allegation fresh urgency, raising the possibility that Saudi Arabia is fighting Ansar Allah not only for itself, but as a proxy for Israel and the United States. If that is how the war is being fought, a treaty would not create a Saudi–Israeli partnership. It would merely acknowledge one already at work.