Report: Tzipi Livni Holds Closed-door Meetings with Arab Officials

4 October 2007

By Nathan Guttman

Israel’s foreign minister Tzipi Livni was quietly carrying out a new strategy of normalizing relations with Arab countries in a series of backroom meetings.

During her weeklong stay in the United States, Tzipi Livni made her case at the U.N. as well as in a series of meetings with representatives from a host of Arab countries that currently do not maintain formal ties with Israel.

“As the parties take the risks for peace, we look to the international community and to the Arab and Muslim world to offer support, not to stipulate conditions,” Livni said Monday in her speech at the General Assembly.

In closed-door meetings with Arab officials, Livni set out specific measures to support the process, including the public backing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the beginning of a normalization process with Israel.

During the week, she shuttled between meetings with the Amir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, and with cabinet ministers from Oman, Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, Egypt and Mauritania. She also participated in a meeting attended by the secretary general of Oman’s foreign ministry hosted by the American Jewish Committee. The event celebrated 10 years of a joint desalination project in Oman, the only remaining active cooperation program out of the many joint groups that were established after the Oslo Accords.

The flurry of activity comes in advance of an American-sponsored peace conference set for next month. American officials announced this week that the conference would take place in Annapolis, Md.

Livni’s tactics seemed designed as a response to what Israelis perceive as one of the major failures of the 2000 Camp David U.S.-Palestinian-Israeli summit: Lacking the support of Saudi Arabia and other moderate Arab countries, the Palestinian leadership under Yasser Arafat would not go ahead with compromises on issues relating to refugees and Jerusalem, ultimately resulting in the process’s failure.

Israel has struggled to achieve normal relations with Arab states, but Arab Gulf countries have long made resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute — or at least achieving significant progress toward a resolution — a precondition of normal relations. As a result of this policy, Israel has only a handful of low-level interest offices in Arab countries and has no diplomatic or commercial ties with the most important player in the region, Saudi Arabia.

According to Israeli diplomatic sources, the foreign minister called last week for gradual or phased normalization between Arab countries and Israel, but she stressed Israel’s expectation to see the Arab world show its gratitude for Israel’s willingness to show both on final-status issues and on measures designed to improve the situation on the ground.