Important history was made yesterday, and the tectonic plates of Middle East moved, as the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, explicitly acknowledged Israel's right to exist, in a homeland alongside a Palestinian state.  In a wide-ranging interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic:

He told me he recognizes the right of the Jewish people to have a nation-state of their own next to a Palestinian state; no Arab leader has ever acknowledged such a right.

Later in his account of his interview, Goldberg judges:

If Prince Mohammed actually achieves what he says he wants to achieve, the Middle East will be a changed place.

Yes, indeed.  "Revolutionary" is not too strong a word for what MbS, as he is widely known, has in mind.  And he is no starry-eyed idealist, but a pragmatist responding to the existential threat to his regime, and more broadly to Sunni Islam, posed by the Shiite mullahs of Iran, intent on developing a nuclear arsenal with which to hasten a final, cataclysmic Armageddon and a return of the Twelfth Imam, the Mahdi, who will usher in an era of peace under the world rule of (Shia) Islam.

For a host of pragmatic reasons, MbS and Saudi Arabia need Israel's help in countering Iran.  The old shibboleths of support for the Palestinians in their quest to drive the Jews into the sea no longer are useful.

Public acknowledgement of this change in policy is a major turning point in the Middle East.  For decades, Saudi money has been crucial in keeping the Palestinian hereditary refugees able to reproduce and multiply in their "camps" (really, cities), agitating against the existence of Jews in the Dar al Islam – the Middle East.  Now the guardian of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina has declared that Jews have a place in those lands.

James Lewis agrees and emails:

The new announcement follows the Trump-Sisi-Salman-MbS summit last year in Riyadh, which was followed by a major purge by the Salman-MbS faction against what seem to be reactionary jihadist elements in the Sunni world.

Turkey is now in opposition, and there will no doubt be a lot of moves that our media will totally ignore. 

As Saudi Arabia moves toward the light, Turkey is reviving its own dream of dominating the Middle East, as the Ottoman Empire did until a century ago.  Turkey and Iran thus bookend the Sunni territory that the House of Saud sees as its natural sphere of influence.

As this plays out, keep in mind that Ottoman rule was cruel and corrupt in the extreme.  There are no pleasant memories of Turkish domination.

The past seven decades of Middle East history are now over, and a new era is beginning.