Riyadh, the Number Is Now in Jerusalem

In June 1990, Secretary of State James Baker sat before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and read a phone number into the record. “Everybody over there should know that the telephone number is 1-202-456-1414,” he said. “When you’re serious about peace, call us.” It was the White House switchboard, and it was a taunt aimed squarely at Israel: stop stalling, stop making excuses, and call Washington when you finally mean it. The line set off thousands of calls to the White House. It also stuck, because everyone understood exactly who was being lectured and who was doing the lecturing.

Thirty-six years later, the phone is ringing again. Only this time it isn’t ringing in Jerusalem. It’s ringing in Riyadh, and nobody there wants to pick it up.

Look at the last two weeks. The Houthis put missiles into the headquarters of Saudi Aramco in Dhahran, burning through several floors of the building that runs the kingdom’s oil. They struck King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh and killed three people, a pilot among them. They are now warning commercial airlines that they will shoot passenger jets out of the Saudi sky, and they claim to have shot down a Saudi F-15 and hit a Eurofighter Typhoon. The crown prince is reportedly moving between bunker-equipped palaces. The kingdom’s air defenses, its alliances, its money, none of it is stopping the bleeding.

So let’s be honest about the situation, the way friends are honest. Saudi Arabia’s back is against the wall. And the one country on earth with three years of live, proven experience fighting these exact people, mapping their launch sites, their supply routes, their command structure, is the country Riyadh still won’t name out loud.

That country is Israel. And Israel should not be waiting by the phone. It should go first.

Baker read his number into the public record. Israel should do the same. Not through quiet channels, not through briefings to diplomats that both governments deny. A public offer, from the prime minister, in plain words: Israel stands ready to help Saudi Arabia defend itself against the Houthis, and here are the terms. A public offer does two things. It makes the help real. And it takes away the excuse. Riyadh can never again say nobody offered. If the kingdom keeps burning, the whole region will know a hand was held out and left hanging.

Here is what that offer should contain, and it isn’t a signing ceremony and a handshake for the cameras. It’s the real thing: intelligence on where the missiles come from and where they’re going, the F-35s and F-15s that have kept Israeli skies clear while Saudi skies fill with smoke, the layered missile defense that actually works. Not a piece of paper. Capability. The difference between a kingdom that absorbs these strikes and a kingdom that stops them.

We can afford to extend this hand because we are not the ones in trouble. That’s not arrogance; it’s just where things stand. The strong party is the one offering help to the party that needs it, and asking for something reasonable in return: an end to the conflict with us. Full recognition. A real resolution, so that the whole region can stop pretending the fight is still worth having.

And this is where I have to ask the hard question, as a friend and not an enemy.

Is the hatred really so deep that you would let your own kingdom burn rather than take the hand?

Because that’s what this comes down to. The people who raised a generation to despise the Jews and the Jewish state are watching that same state stand up and say: we don’t want to fight you. We want to save you. We’ll share what we know, we’ll put our best in the air, we’ll help you defend your cities and your oil and your people. All you have to do is admit, out loud, that we were never the enemy you were told we were.

That’s the part that should sting, and it should sting in the right direction. Reports say the crown prince is refusing Israeli help because of how it would look to his public. Think about what that means. The kingdom is being told it cannot accept the one thing that could save it, because decades of propaganda made the savior unspeakable. That is cutting off your nose to spite your face, on a national scale. That is pride and old hatred doing the enemy’s work for free.

Because here is the thing both of us need to say plainly: we are not each other’s enemy. We share one. The Houthis, Iran, the whole jihadist project, these are not people with a grievance to be negotiated. They are people who want chaos, who want the region in flames, who are as happy to burn a Saudi oil company’s headquarters as an Israeli apartment block. They do not distinguish between us. The real dividing line in this region was never Jew against Arab. It is everyone who wants to build against everyone who only wants to destroy. And on that line, Saudi Arabia and Israel are already standing on the same side. You just haven’t admitted it yet.

So let the world see it. Let the crown prince stand up and say what is true: the conflict with Israel is over, the Jewish state is a partner, and the real war is against the ones trying to drag us all into the fire. Call on the Muslim world to recognize Israel and close this chapter for good. Do that, and you don’t just get our intelligence and our jets. You get a future where your children aren’t running to bunkers.

The offer is on the table, in public, for everyone to see. The only question left is whether pride is worth more than survival.

So, with apologies to Secretary Baker: when you’re serious about saving your kingdom, Riyadh, the number isn’t in Washington anymore.

It’s in Jerusalem. Pick up the phone.