CAIRO: In another reflection of warming diplomatic ties, Israeli foreign minister Silvan Shalom — a member of Israel’s right-wing Likud Party — visited Cairo Tuesday to hold discussions with President Hosni Mubarak. Aboul-Gheit reportedly stressed Egypt’s concerns over perceived Israeli violations of the US-backed ‘roadmap’ to peace in the Middle East. But Shalom was quick to point to the ongoing “dialogue between our two countries” despite apparent differences. “Our relationship has taken tangible steps in the last couple of months,” he said at a press conference after the meeting.
Shalom’s visit was only the latest in a series of high-level Israeli visits amidst a flurry of mutual conciliatory gestures. These have included prisoner exchanges, discussions on a lucrative bilateral gas deal, and - most importantly — the return of an Egyptian ambassador to Israeli capital Tel Aviv after a four-year absence.
While Israel now enjoys full diplomatic relations with Egypt, Jordan and Mauritania, and has a lower-level presence in Qatar, Shalom has given his ministry a year to build diplomatic relations with ten other Arab countries. “We aspire to normalise our relations with as many Arab countries as possible,” Ruth Landé, press attaché at the Israeli embassy in Cairo told IPS.
The beginnings of the budding Egypt-Israel rapprochement came in mid-December with the signing of a Qualified Industrial Zones (QIZ) agreement by Cairo, Tel Aviv and Washington. The deal allows Egyptian producers to export goods to the US market duty-free provided such exports contain at least 12 per cent Israeli input.
The inking of that accord brought Israeli deputy prime minister and minister of trade Ehud Olmert to Cairo, where he participated in a signing ceremony with Egyptian counterpart Rachid Mohamed Rachid and US trade representative (now deputy secretary of state) Robert Zoellick.
Olmert expressed the hope after the signing ceremony that the accord would represent “a precedent for many other countries in the Middle East, and that additional countries will find out that having peace with Israel means not just neighbourly relations, but opens up great opportunities for economic trade, business relations and the improvement of the quality of life for all peoples involved.”
Since then, despite mounting public anger over Israeli policies in occupied Palestine territories, Cairo has continued to host a number of high-profile Israeli dignitaries.
In February, Eli Yishai, chairman of Israel’s Shas party and member of the Knesset visited Cairo, where he met Aboul-Gheit and Suleiman along with parliament speaker Fathi Sorour. After the meeting he praised the 26-year-old peace agreement between Egypt and Israel “even if it is a cold peace at times.”
Yishai went on to emphasise Egypt’s crucial role in the Israel-Palestine peace process and in Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to withdraw Israeli military forces and settlements from the Gaza Strip. “Just as Mubarak says that only Sharon can make peace, I say that only Mubarak can bring regional peace,” Yishai said.
In mid-March Reuven Rivlin became the first Israeli Knesset (parliament) speaker to come to Egypt since the two countries began diplomatic relations. Rivlin, also a Likud member, was in Cairo to attend a conference of parliamentary representatives from European and Mediterranean states.
Egyptian delegation head Sorour gave Rivlin the honour of being the first to address delegates. At a press conference following the event, Rivlin told reporters that he had invited Sorour to speak at the Knesset following former Egyptian president Anwar El- Sadat’s historic 1979 speech before the Israeli parliament. He said Sorour had promised to accept the invitation “in due time.”
Despite these moves towards widening reconciliation, normalisation remains a sensitive issue in most Middle East capitals. Moroccan foreign minister Mohammed Bin Eissa vehemently denied last month that an agreement to open a Moroccan liaison office in Tel Aviv had been reached, and insisted that a recent meeting with his Israeli counterpart at Geneva airport had only been in passing.
“It’s not possible to establish any economic or political relations between the two sides at this time,” Bin Eissa was quoted as saying in the March 21 edition of pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat.
On April 8, news reports that Israeli President Moshe Katsav had shaken hands with Syrian President Bashar Al-Asad and Iranian President Mohammed Khatami at the funeral of Pope John Paul II drew spirited denials from the Syrian and Iranian leaders.
Despite the diplomatic thaw in Egypt, popular opinion remains solidly against full restoration of ties with the Jewish state. “Let’s see something to improve the lives of the Palestinians living under occupation first,” said 30-year-old Cairo resident Tamer Azzam, echoing the views of most of his friends. “Then maybe we can talk about peace and friendship.”
Even the largely secular pro-democracy movements — treated in the western press as components of a so-called ‘Middle East spring’ following the ‘democratization’ of Iraq — have been quick to distance themselves from notions of normalisation. The April 6 issue of pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat quoted George Ishaq, spokesman for the pro-democracy Kefiya movement which has called for an end to the Mubarak presidency as saying that the group had decided not to deal with any “normalizers”.
But despite public misgivings, few would disagree that — diplomatically speaking — there has been a seismic shift. Mohamed Said, deputy director of the government-run Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies said the rush to put bilateral relations on a normal footing can largely be attributed to a desire to “score points” with the United States.
“This is true of a number of Arab countries,” said Said. “By doing something good for Israel, they can escape from American pressure on other fronts, like reform.”
Whatever Cairo’s motivations, Aboul-Gheit appears aware of the dangers of moving too fast on a traditionally thorny path. At the end of his press conference with Shalom, Egypt’s first ambassador hurried from the room without complying with photographers’ requests for a final handshake with his counterpart.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service
