Deputy crown prince: ‘Sky is the limit’ for Saudi society amid reforms

April 22, 2017

Jeddah, Apr 22: The “sky is the limit” for Saudi Arabian society if people are willing to embrace the change, the Kingdom’s Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said.

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In a wide-ranging interview with American columnist David Ignatius, the deputy crown prince reflected on the ground-breaking changes presently taking place in the Kingdom under the Vision 2030 plan.

He told Ignatius that the crucial requirement for reform is public willingness to change a traditional society, saying the era of extreme religious conservatism is over.

“If the Saudi people are convinced, the sky is the limit,” he was quoted as saying.

David Ignatius, who was in the Kingdom this week as part of the press corps accompanying US Defense Secretary James Mattis, wrote about Saudi Arabia in an in-depth opinion article for The Washington Post.

The article drew heavily on his 90-minute conversation with Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

“Two years into his campaign as change agent,” the deputy crown prince “appears to be gaining the confidence to push his agenda of economic and social reform,” Ignatius wrote.

“Change seems increasingly desired in this young, restless country,” he wrote. He quoted a recent poll which indicated that 85 percent of the public, if forced to choose, would support the government rather than religious authorities on policy matters.

The article also reveals that 77 percent of those surveyed supported the government’s Vision 2030 reform plan, and that 82 percent favored public music performances attended by men and women.

During the conversation with Ignatius, the deputy crown prince was optimistic about President Donald Trump; the prince described him as a president who will bring America back to the right track.

“Trump has not yet completed 100 days, and he has restored all the alliances of the US with its conventional allies,” Ignatius quotes the deputy crown prince as saying.

The article talks about the growing ties between Saudi Arabia and the US as evidenced in the discussions with Mattis during which the possibility of additional US support was discussed “if the Houthi insurgents in Yemen don’t agree to a UN-brokered settlement.”

The deputy crown prince favored a relationship of equals between Saudi Arabia and the US. “We have been influenced by you in the US a lot,” he told Ignatius. “Not because anybody exerted pressure on us — if anyone puts pressure on us, we go the other way. But if you put a movie in the cinema and I watch it, I will be influenced.” Without this cultural nudge, he said, “We would have ended up like North Korea.”

Explaining to Ignatius about why Saudi Arabia has been wooing Russia, the deputy crown prince said: “The main objective is not to have Russia place all its cards in the region behind Iran. (We have been) coordinating our oil policies (recently with Moscow) in what could be the most important economic deal for Russia in modern times.”

The deputy crown prince also talked about the pace of economic reforms, which he says “appear to be moving ahead slowly but steadily.”

The prince said that the budget deficit had been reduced; non-oil revenue increased 46 percent from 2014 to 2016 and is forecast to grow another 12 percent this year. Unemployment and housing remain problems, he said, and improvement in those areas is not likely until between 2019 and 2021.

Ignatius describes the deputy crown prince as “the instigator of (the) attempt to reimagine the Kingdom,” and observes that “unlike so many Saudi princes, he wasn’t educated in the West, which may have preserved the raw combative energy that is part of his appeal to young Saudis.”

According to the deputy crown prince, “extreme religious conservatism in Saudi Arabia is a relatively recent phenomenon, born in reaction to the 1979 Iranian revolution and the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Makkah by Sunni radicals later that year.”

“I’m young. Seventy percent of our citizens are young,” he told Ignatius. “We don’t want to waste our lives in this whirlpool that we were in for the past 30 years. We want to end this epoch now. We want, as the Saudi people, to enjoy the coming days, and concentrate on developing our society and developing ourselves as individuals and families while retaining our religion and customs. We will not continue to be in the post-’79 era,” he said. “That age is over.”

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November 30,2025

The United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT) has condemned the Israeli regime for enforcing a policy of “organized torture” against Palestinians.

In a report published on Friday, CAT stated that the occupying regime enforces a deliberate policy of “organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment” against Palestinian abductees, particularly since October 7, 2023, when Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza.

The committee expressed “deep concern over repeated severe beatings, dog attacks, electrocution, water-boarding, use of prolonged stress positions [and] sexual violence” inflicted on Palestinians.

Palestinian prisoners were degraded by “being made to act like animals or being urinated on,” systematically denied medical care, and subjected to excessive restraints, “in some cases resulting in amputation,” the report added.

CAT also condemned the routine application of “unlawful combatants law” to justify the prolonged detention without trial of thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children.

More than 10,000 Palestinians, including women and children, are currently held in Israeli prisons, according to Palestinian and international human rights groups, with 3,474 Palestinians in “administrative detention,” meaning they are imprisoned without trial for indefinite periods.

The report highlighted the “high proportion of children who are currently detained without charge or on remand,” noting that while Israel sets the age of criminal responsibility at 12, even younger children have been abducted.

Children designated as security prisoners face severe restrictions on family contact, may be subjected to solitary confinement, and are denied access to education, in clear violation of international law.

The committee further suggested that Israel’s policies across the Occupied Territories constitute collective torture against the Palestinian population.

“A range of policies adopted by Israel in the course of its continued unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading living conditions for the Palestinian population,” the report said.

On Thursday, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas condemned the systematic killing and torture of Palestinian abductees in Israeli prisons, urging international action to halt these abuses.

Citing human rights data, Hamas stated that 94 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli prisons since the start of Tel Aviv’s genocidal war on Gaza.

“This reflects an organized criminal approach that has turned these prisons into direct killing grounds to eliminate our people,” the resistance movement said.

Hamas called on the international community, the UN, and human rights organizations to immediately pressure Israel to end crimes against prisoners and uphold their rights as guaranteed by all international conventions and norms.

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News Network
November 24,2025

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Israeli forces have pushed over the Syrian frontier, erecting a checkpoint and stopping vehicles in the southwestern city of Quneitra, in yet another breach of the Arab country’s sovereignty.

The violation took place on Sunday, when the troops made their way across the border, setting up the outpost near the Ain al-Bayda junction in northern Quneitra, Syrian outlets reported.

According to the al-Ikhbariya paper, an Israeli detachment positioned itself at the junction, halting cars and conducting searches.

The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that three Israeli military vehicles then moved further into the northern countryside, deploying between the town of Jubata al-Khashab and the villages of Ofaniya and Ain al-Bayda. The agency added that a separate Israeli unit mounted a new incursion in the central region, approaching the villages of Umm Batina and al-Ajraf.

Residents said such activities have surged in recent months, pointing to Israeli advances onto farmland, leveling of extensive forested areas, arrests, and spread of mobile checkpoints.

The Israeli regime began markedly increasing its military aggression against Syria last year.

The escalation coincided with increasingly ferocious onslaughts throughout the country by the so-called Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Takfiri terrorist group, which the government of President Bashar al-Assad had confined to northwestern Syria. The HTS, however, managed to overthrow the government as the Israeli attacks would pummel the country’s civilian and defensive infrastructure.

Various reports have shown that, during the escalation, the regime conducted more than 1,000 airstrikes on the Syrian territory and over 400 ground raids into the south.

Following the collapse of the Assad government, Tel Aviv also widened its grip over the occupied Golan Heights by taking control of a demilitarized buffer zone, in defiance of a 1974 Disengagement Agreement. Earlier this month, senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the buffer zone, prompting expressions of alarm on the part of the United Nations.

The United States, the regime’s biggest ally, has, meanwhile, been fraternizing the HTS head Abu Mohammed al-Jolani amid the widely reported prospect of rapprochement with Tel Aviv.

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News Network
November 24,2025

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Israel has launched a new act of aggression on a residential neighborhood in Lebanon's capital, Beirut, killing and injuring about two dozen civilians.

The Israeli regime's military said in a statement that its forces carried out a so-called precise strike in a residential apartment in Dahiyeh in the southern suburbs of Beirut on Sunday.

The aggression targeted residential areas, killing at least five people and injuring more than 28 people, Lebanon's Health Ministry said. 

Hezbollah announced the martyrdom of senior Hezbollah commander Haytham Ali Tabatabai and four resistance fighters.

Lebanese President Michel Aoun condemned the airstrike, calling it a clear demonstration of Tel Aviv’s disregard for repeated international calls to halt violations on Lebanese soil.

“Israel refuses to implement international resolutions and all efforts aimed at ending the escalation and restoring stability,” Aoun said, urging the international community to take action to prevent further aggression.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement also condemned the attack, holding the international community accountable. 

“The international community bears responsibility and continues to provide cover for these attacks as long as it does not restrain the occupiers,” said Ali Abu Shahin, a member of the group’s political bureau.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced that the Israeli army carried out a strike “in the heart of Beirut."

Netanyahu reportedly approved the operation following recommendations from top Israeli security officials.

Two senior US officials commented on the Israeli strike.

The first official said that Israel did not notify Americans in advance about the attack. "We were informed immediately after the strike was carried out."

The second senior official said that the "US knew for several days that Israel was planning to escalate its strikes in Lebanon, but did not know in advance the timing, location, or target of the strike."

Speaking from the site of the Israeli strike, Lebanese MP Ali Ammar condemned the attack as part of a broader campaign of aggression that has targeted "all of Lebanon since the Washington-sponsored ceasefire."

He stated that "any attack on Lebanon is a violation of red lines; this aggression is part and parcel of the entity that targets Lebanon's dignity, sovereignty, and security of citizens."

Ammar went on to say the resistance is responding with "utmost wisdom, patience, and will confront the enemy at the appropriate time."

"Unfortunately, the enemy is emboldened to commit its aggression by voices within Lebanon that have turned themselves into tools that support its aggression," he added.

The Israeli attack on the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital is the latest blatant violation of the ceasefire Israel signed with Hezbollah in November 2024, which was intended to end hostilities that had escalated into full-scale war.

An Israeli strike on the Ain al-Hilweh camp near Sidon in southern Lebanon late Tuesday killed at least 14 people. It wounded several others, including young students, according to the Lebanese health ministry.

The military claimed the attack targeted “a Hamas training compound” used to plan and carry out attacks against the regime -- a claim that has frequently been made without evidence.

Hamas rejected the allegations as “a blatant lie aimed at justifying the massacre,” stating it had “no military installations in the Palestinian camps in Lebanon” and that the targeted site was merely “an open sports field.”

According to Lebanese authorities, Israeli attacks have killed approximately 4,000 people and displaced more than 1.2 million residents across the country since October 2023.

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