Washington Report, December 2005, pages 32-33

Islam and the Near East in the Far East

Israel Seeks Gaza Withdrawal Reward From Muslim-Majority Countries

By John Gee

Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom addressed the 60th session of the U.N. General Assembly Sept. 20. Above him, Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Dani Gilerman sits in for the General Assembly president (AFP Photo/Don Emmert).

FOLLOWING the signing in 1993 of the PLO-Israel Declaration of Principles (popularly known as the Oslo accords), many thought that the issues at the core of the Palestine conflict would be resolved through negotiations within the next few years. More critical observers warned that the agreement gave no guarantee that a genuinely independent and viable Palestinian state would be created and that it sidelined the issue of the rights of Palestinians exiled in 1948 and later. They were often repaid for their skepticism by being labeled as extremists, people who did not want peace or, at best, unduly pessimistic.

Twelve years later, Israel still directly occupies most of the Palestinian land it took in 1967 and controls access to the remainder. The settler population in the West Bank, not including East Jerusalem, has doubled from 111,600 in 1993 to 250,000 now. (In East Jerusalem, the growth rate has been much lower.) Except for those PLO officials, police and their family members who came to Palestine following the PLO-Israel agreement, the exiles remain in exile. It is very obvious that the 1993 agreement did not produce what its Palestinian supporters had hoped it would.

Among its benefits for Israel were the opportunities it opened up for developing diplomatic and business relations. Some states that previously had been committed to giving political support to the Palestinians and had either practiced an economic boycott of Israel or severely curtailed trade relations with it took the attitude that there was no reason to be more Palestinian than the Palestinians. If the recognized political leadership of the Palestinian people was in the process of reaching a peace settlement with Israel, they saw no reason why they should not develop their own ties with it. Jordan signed a peace treaty, and a number of other Muslim countries opened up political contacts and quietly expanded trade with Israel.

The breakdown of the “peace process” in September 2000 and Israel’s brutality in trying to put down the Palestinian revolt that then erupted put this diplomatic and economic offensive on hold: no government of a Muslim country wanted to be seen to be expanding ties with Israel while its people were witnessing daily reports of Israeli soldiers killing Palestinians and destroying their homes.

Today, however, the Sharon government has seized upon its withdrawal of all the Jewish settlements and Israeli military forces from the Gaza Strip, completed in September, as an opportunity for reviving this offensive. The withdrawal is portrayed as proof of Israel’s desire for peace with the Palestinians. Reports that Sharon had shaken hands with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf at the U.N. 60th anniversary summit in mid-September led to a small flurry of speculation that relations between their two states might be warming. On Sept. 15 the foreign ministers of Israel and Qatar met, and Israel also tried its luck with Indonesia.

Before the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip had been completed, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev was reported to have said that Israel had recently sent messages to Indonesia expressing a a wish to develop ties. Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda met his Israeli counterpart, Silvan Shalom, in New York prior to the U.N. summit. Their Sept. 13 meeting was supposedly secret, but word of it got out quickly.

While there were no big protests in Indonesia, some members of Indonesia’s parliament expressed concern. Amris Hassan of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), now the second largest in the parliament, said he would ask Hassan Wirayuda if the meeting was planned. “We are the world’s largest Muslim nation,” the member of parliament noted. “It is quite important for Israel to lobby us with regard to issues in the Middle East.

“Of course,” he continued, “I have not come to the conclusion that the government has begun to change its political stance on the Israel-Palestine issue. But if it has, then the government has violated the Constitution because our country must never have political ties with aggressors.”

Others questioned the purpose of the encounter, but interest in the meeting faded after officials on the two sides refused to confirm or deny that a meeting had occurred.

Three weeks after the meeting, the English-language Jakarta Post published on Oct. 3 an article by Silvan Shalom, reportedly sent to the paper via the Israeli Embassy in Singapore. In “Time for a dialogue to resolve the Palestinian issue,” the Israeli foreign minister described the withdrawal of the settlers from the Gaza Strip in terms that seem deliberately framed to appeal to people moved by the injustice of what happened to most Palestinians in 1948:

“Thousands of families were forced to leave their homes. Children had to leave their kindergartens and schools, and many people lost their means of livelihood,” Shalom wrote, conveniently ignoring the facts that they should not have moved to the occupied territories in the first place, were generously compensated and had new homes to move to.

‘Despite all these difficulties,” Shalom continued, “Israel has implemented its disengagement plan in order to break the political stalemate in the region and to restart the peace process. This historic decision reflects Israel’s yearning for peace with all its Arab neighbors.”

After discussing relations with the Palestinians, Shalom turned to the question of the development of contacts between Israel and other states, especially in the Muslim world: “At this time of renewed hope for progress toward peace in the Middle East, we believe that the time is ripe to promote dialogue with all countries.”

In what seemed an oblique reference to his reported meeting in New York with Hassan Wirayuda, Shalom added:

“I have just returned from the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where I met with many of my Arab and Muslim counterparts to discuss bilateral ties and regional cooperation for the benefit of all our citizens. We all agreed that there is much to be gained for all by increasing our efforts to promote understanding and cooperation between us.”

Calling for dialogue, Shalom criticized hostile reporting and commentary on Israel, saying that a true picture of Israel was that it is “an open, democratic and pluralistic society in which multiculturalism is an inherent part of daily life.”

He concluded, “Now is the time to begin this dialogue.”

Significantly, although Shalom launched his article by suggesting that the Gaza withdrawal was a move intended to further the quest for peace with the Palestinians, he told his readers that the Palestine question should not be allowed to stand in the way of a dialogue. That is consistent with interpretations of the present intentions of the Sharon government: that, after the Gaza withdrawal, the Israeli government will seek one excuse after another not to proceed with talks that would lead to pressure for further withdrawals. Shalom seems to have wanted to pre-empt criticism of such behavior by urging the expansion of ties between Israel and the Muslim world regardless of what happens in its dealings with the Palestinians. The long-term danger, if that occurred, would be that the Palestine issue, still unresolved, would be treated more and more as a mere footnote in relations between Israel and the Muslim world, rather than the fundamental question that it remains.

John Gee is a free-lance writer based in Singapore, and author of Unequal Conflict: The Palestinians and Israel, available from the AET Book Club.