This is the price that Saudi Arabia pays to get along with the US Congress: "Saudis partially lift boycott on Israel." This trade agreement is significant only because Saudi Arabia will begin the path of normalization with Israel, which all governments in the Arab world are willing to pursue to win US Congressional favor, but it will also have an impact on the local economic conditions inside the kingdom. People now mock the nationalization campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Algeria. But if nationalization was the takeover of economic enterprises by the state, "economic reform" and "free trade" represent the takeover of economic enterprises by ANOTHER OUTSIDE STATE, mostly the US and the multinational corporations. I knew something was coming when the Saudi government invited a Pakistani and Indian banks to open branches in the kingdom last month. That is how the House of Saudi does business when they are about to cover up. Back in 1990 when they "invited" US troops (although the troops moved before the invitation came), they would not refer to US troops as "US troops" but as "Arab, Muslim, and other friendly forces." The invitation of the Pakistan and Indian banks was a mere token gesture to prepare the ground for an avalanche of US and Western banks.