washington | At home, Israel’s government may be preoccupied with the road to a Gaza Strip pullout, but abroad, its emphasis is on the road beyond.
Israeli diplomats, dreading the vacuum the pullout set for mid-2005 might create, have scrambled in recent weeks for U.S., European and Arab help in propping up an Israel-free Gaza Strip.
“Day after” scenarios are the focus of a flurry of meetings between Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and his counterparts attending this week’s opening of the U.N. General Assembly in New York.
Shalom is especially eager about meetings with foreign ministers from Arab nations, key to Israeli plans to nudge the Palestinians toward replacing President Yasser Arafat by the time Israel leaves.
“While Arafat is still in power, there is no glimmer of hope there will be moderate Palestinians that will be able to talk to us,” Shalom told a gathering of Jewish leaders convened Monday, Sept. 20, by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
The foreign minister met with counterparts from Tunisia, Oman and Qatar and spoke with Jordanian and Egyptian foreign ministers early this week at an event honoring Seeds of Peace, a group promoting dialogue between Israeli and Arab youths.
The meetings appeared to pay off: Qatari leader Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani was predictably tough on Israel in his U.N. speech Tuesday, Sept. 21, blaming the Jewish state for the dire economic straits of the Palestinians. However, Hamad did not mention Arafat at all, never mind issue the once-standard call for the Palestinian leader’s release from virtual house arrest.
Qatar is home to the most influential Arab satellite TV channel, Al-Jazeera. The sheik does not directly influence its coverage, but the omission in his speech was nonetheless telling. Should Israel persuade Arab opinion makers to diminish Arafat’s status as a victim, it could undermine his standing in Palestinian elections scheduled for before the withdrawal.
The Arab state most key to Israel’s hopes of a smooth Gaza transition is Egypt, which is committed to retraining and reorganizing Palestinian security forces toward the Israeli evacuation.
Egyptian officials have strong-armed Arafat into agreeing to consolidate a myriad of security services into just three bodies, which is likely to hamper Arafat’s longstanding strategy of maintaining power by playing one armed Palestinian faction against the other.
Shalom touted new commerce zones in Egypt for Palestinian laborers to replace the zones that were shut down on the Israeli-Gaza border because they posed a security threat. But Egyptian officials are not enthusiastic about masses of Palestinians crossing their border each day.
Additionally, Egypt is making clear to Israel its position that the Gaza withdrawal should be a first step toward Palestinian statehood, not an end in itself. Commitment to Palestinian statehood is unlikely in the current volatile political environment in Israel.
Israel is not focused only on Arab support for the withdrawal. European assistance is also seen as crucial to helping the Palestinians onto their feet.
Shalom was also meeting this week with Javier Solana, the European Union’s secretary-general. Israel wants the Europeans to contribute to Palestinian infrastructure needs once it withdraws from Gaza and parts of the West Bank.
Shalom told the group of Jewish leaders that his government was forging ahead with the “day after” plans because withdrawal is increasingly seen as inevitable, despite the settlement movement’s surprisingly strong campaign against it.
“There is a majority within the government and within the Knesset for the disengagement plan,” he said.
More significant is pressure from the Bush administration, which is still eager to get Arab nations on board in its efforts to tamp down violence in U.S.-occupied Iraq.
“There is this serious anti-American feeling because of these actions in Iraq, and in the West Bank and Gaza, that we haven’t done enough,” Secretary of State Colin Powell said last week on NBC.
U.S. officials have made it clear to Israel that there is a price to be paid for U.S. support on issues the Jewish state considers critical — the building of the West Bank security barrier and keeping Arafat isolated.
President Bush addressed the Israeli-Palestinian issue in his Sept. 21 speech to the United Nations. He called on other nations to join the United States in isolating Arafat. “World leaders should withdraw all favor and support from any Palestinian ruler who fails his people and betrays their cause,” Bush said.
But he also said: “Israel should impose a settlement freeze, dismantle unauthorized outposts, end the daily humiliation of the Palestinian people and avoid any actions that prejudice final negotiations.’
Bush’s unequivocal call for a settlement freeze appeared to squelch speculation that the United States was ready to live with the recent renewed building within some settlements.