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Cold Peace Ices Over as Jordan, Egypt Work to delegitimize Israel
Members of Jordanian labor unions burn an Israeli flag to mark the 15th anniversary of the country’s peace treaty with Israel. Few Jordanians favor the peace, public opinion polls find. Getty Images by Stewart Ain The Jordanian government largely ignored the anniversary, in contrast to a joint air show that was staged over Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Amman to celebrate the first anniversary of the signing. A Jordanian columnist, Hassan Barari, wrote this week that it is rare to “find a Jordanian who would say that peace is a reality.” The Israel Project released a poll last week in which not one of 250 Jordanians interviewed face-to-face gave Israel a favorable rating – a level of rejection the pollster (Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research) said it had not 
Meanwhile Egypt, the only other Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel, denied entry last week to a team of Israeli breast cancer researchers and advocates who were slated to participate in a program in Cairo organized by the U.S.-based Susan G. Komen For the Cure. And the prior week it had denied a visa to Yossi Gordon, head of the Association of Contractors and Builders in Israel. Egypt’s culture minister, Farouk Hosny, blamed his failed bid last month to head UNESCO on a Jewish conspiracy “cooked up in New York.” And this week, a scheduled meeting of European Union and Mediterranean states in Istanbul next month was canceled after Egypt refused to sit at a table with Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. A senior Israeli official was quoted as saying: “It is a shame the Egyptians are playing a negative role in the region.” These actions are part of the continuing effort by the Arab world to “delegitimize Israel,” according to Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “We’re seeing this more and more as a strategy of the rejectionist Muslim world.” And the decision by Egypt to bar Israelis visas to attend conferences, he said, is a move to revitalize the Arab boycott of Israel that had “lost its impact” in recent years. “In fact, Israel’s economy is booming and we thought this was behind us,” Foxman said. “The first glimpse of the [renewed] boycott came two or three years ago in universities and churches in Europe; England was the heyday of it.” Just last week, representatives of 16 Arab nations met in Damascus to discuss beefing-up their nearly 60-year-old economic and trade boycott of Israel. Fueling the anti-Israel outrage in Arab states was Israel’s winter offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Foxman said, in which Hamas claims 1,400 Palestinians were killed, many of them civilians. That action, he noted, has prompted e-mails in South Africa that list Jewish companies to boycott. “We’re also seeing in Turkey and Italy a classic anti-Israel boycott related to Gaza – a boycott of Jews and Jewish stores,” he said. The Jordanians who burned the Israeli flag in Amman Monday were unionists and Foxman said most of the unions in both Jordan and Egypt “will not interact with Israel.” “In fact, if a Jordanian or Egyptian journalist goes to Israel and it becomes known, he is drummed out of the journalists’ syndicate,” he said. “And a reason there is very little trade with Israel is because Egyptian lawyers are not willing to act in behalf of Jordanian or Egyptian clients to make deals. “In fact, Israelis are hesitant about flying [to those countries] for fear not so much of terrorism but that if they got sick that a doctor would not treat them. And more and more we are seeing that Israelis who are traveling are those with dual passports and that they are using the other passport.” But Zalman Shoval, an Israeli diplomat and advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who helped to negotiate the peace treaty with Jordan, said that unlike Egypt, the Jordanians were anxious for the treaty. “We had a de facto peaceful relationship with Jordan many years before we signed the peace treaty because we had common interests,” he said. “When we began negotiations on the peace agreement, the Jordanians made it very clear that their aim was to have a peace agreement with Israel. Therefore the negotiations were very much easier than they were with the Egyptians. And 70 percent of the agreement was concluded under Prime Minister [Yitzchak] Shamir, although [Yitzchak] Rabin signed it.” Asked about the distrust of Israel by the Jordanian population — an estimated 55 to 65 percent of whom are Palestinian — Shoval said the large number of Palestinians in Jordan “exert pressure on the government.” “If Israel were to relinquish the Jordan Valley and there be a Palestinian state, there would be a severe danger that Palestinian irredentism could undermine the regime in Jordan,” Shoval said. “So they are treading a very delicate line.” Although Jordan gave the treaty anniversary little notice, the Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem held a conference to mark the event that was attended by a former Jordanian minister, a former Jordanian army general and a Jordanian involved in coexistence and interfaith dialogue. “They spoke on the joint strategic interests of both countries to keep the peace treaty stable,” said Yitzchak Reiter, a professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the Hebrew University. “The fact that they came to Israel speaks for itself. In Jordan there are those who oppose the current situation and those who, in spite of the tensions particularly around the issues of Jerusalem and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, still see the Israeli-Jordanian relationship as a strategic alliance. ... It is mostly a peace between the state institutions and not among the population.” “If we see progress on the Israeli-Palestinian track, it will affect Jordanian public opinion,” he predicted. “The Arab media in general reflects the mood [of the people]. And there are so many events in which Israel is viewed as the aggressor. ... There are many challenges taking place on the ground. The events on the Temple Mount were broadcast everywhere and they affect the mood.” He was referring to Arab rioting Sunday at the Temple Mount, in the alleyways of the Old City’s Moslem Quarter and in east Jerusalem. Nine Israeli police officers were lightly injured and 21 rioters arrested. It prompted Jordan’s minister of state for media affairs and communication, Nabil Sharif, to call on Israel to keep its security personnel off the Temple Mount, which houses the al-Aqsa Mosque. “Any new provocative attempts by Israeli troops and Jewish extremists such as what happened today in the shrine’s compound represent a flagrant violation of international law and conventions and set the stage for more tension and acts of violence,” Sharif said in a statement. Regarding Egypt’s refusal to grant Israelis visas for the Komen conference, a Great Neck, L.I., resident, Alix Raine, wrote to Komen asking about it. The organization’s founder, Nancy Brinker, wrote back to say that Egypt’s action caught her group by surprise and left them “disappointed.” “We look forward to the day when everyone will be united in this effort [of fighting breast cancer],” Brinker wrote, adding that her group decided to continue with the conference because it was already underway, there were a number of partners involved, and a large number of people were already on the way. On its Web site, Komen said it also “launched a diplomatic effort” and later learned that “all advocates, regardless of their country of origin, are invited.” Foxman said the Egyptian change of heart came about only after “pressure was put on by us, the American Embassy and Komen.” But he said “by the time they changed their stance, it was meaningless because the conference was almost over” and the Israelis did not go.
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