ABSTRACT
Recent media attention has focused on Israel’s relationship with Saudi Arabia and Yemen. This complicated relationship is not a recent phenomenon, but has existed for decades. During the 1960s Israel and Saudi Arabia cooperated on a tactical level to combat the threat of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s expansionist policies in South Arabia. Although this clandestine relationship, which has developed over time to accommodate new shared nemeses, was never formalized or spoken of in public, it has remained an unspoken understanding between leaderships of both countries. At the core of Israeli–Yemeni relations is a layer of cultural affinity between Israel’s sizable Yemeni expatriate community and Yemeni society. Israeli musicians of Yemeni origin and wildly popular in Yemen constitute the public face of Israeli culture to both young and old generations of Yemenis. Yemeni officials have not been as scrupulous in the secrecy of their unofficial and clandestine relations with Israel. Israel’s deepest historic connections were with Yemen’s northern tribesmen whom Israel armed during the tribal guerrilla war against Egypt, 1962–1967. Yemen’s early relations with Israel during the reigns of Imams Ahmad (1948–1962) and Muhammad al-Badr (1962–1970) have since given way to terse diplomatic relations highlighted by periodic reconciliation.
