Leading Saudi broadcaster airs Israeli docuseries on Mossad operations
A prominent Saudi entertainment TV channel is airing an Israeli-produced docuseries about US and Mossad operations against Hezbollah.
Israel’s public broadcaster Kan announced this week that the broadcasting rights of the “The Cassandra Prophecy” documentary series have been sold to the Saudi broadcasting network MBC, according to The Jerusalem Post.
Middle East Eye has seen that the show was available to watch with Arabic or English subtitles on MBC’s online streaming platform Shahid.
The airing of the Israeli series in Saudi Arabia comes amid a flurry of news reports over the past year regarding the potential normalisation of relations between the two countries.
Hopes for an agreement rose in early May when US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan declared that Saudi-Israel normalisation was in the American national security interest.
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A report by Axios that the White House aimed to seal a deal within six-to-seven months, before the next US elections in 2024, added to the frenzy.
Riyadh, for its part, has repeatedly stated that any agreement with Israel will only be possible after a solution to Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories is achieved.
While Saudi Arabia was not a party to the 2020 US-brokered normalisation agreements between Israel and the Arab nations of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Israel are closer now than at any time in history.
The two countries cooperate quietly on security and intelligence to combat Iran. The US move to put Israel in Centcom - US military command for the Middle East - expanded those defence links.
Last year, Saudi Arabia and Oman publicly joined Israel in US-led naval exercises for the first time.
In June, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Eli Cohen spoke on the phone twice to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman within one day as part of negotiations to allow direct commercial flights to the kingdom for Muslims from Israel making the Hajj pilgrimage.
Riyadh's informal relations with Israel over recent years have also led many Palestinians to believe it too will join fellow Gulf countries in signing formal agreements with Israel.
These beliefs were heightened in October 2020, shortly after the signing of the normalisation agreements, when the Saudi-funded TV channel MBC temporarily removed an acclaimed historical drama about Palestine from its streaming service.
The series followed one Palestinian family and their struggle for survival across four decades, beginning during the British Mandate over Palestine in the 1930s.
The incident came amid a string of recent erasures of Palestinian issues from Arab television programmes, including in Egypt.
However, a social media campaign that bombarded Shahid.net with negative comments and ratings on its Facebook page and its Google Play and Apple Store applications eventually resulted in the Palestinian series being reinstated.
This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French edition.
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