Realignment in
the Muslim world
Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s discreet visit to Oman on the invitation of
Sultan Qaboos may be the latest development in the realignment taking place
before our eyes in the Muslim world. The visit was the first by any Israeli
prime minister in over two decades. In 1994, then Israeli prime minister Yitzhak
Rabin visited Oman and acting prime minister Shimon Peres visited in 1996,
heralding the opening of trade representative offices in both countries. In
October 2000, Oman closed the offices after the outbreak of the second
Palestinian intifada against the occupying Israelis. This early opening between
Oman and Israel came in the wake of the 1993 Oslo Accords that laid down the principle
of a resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through a two-state
solution. However, the years that followed revealed Israeli duplicity and the
increasing repression of the Palestinians agitating for the implementation of
this principle of the Oslo Accords. It was only when the Palestinians rose
against their Israeli tormentors in the second intifada that the hopes for a
resolution faded and Oman retreated from its opening up to Israel. Since that
time, and particularly since the ascent to power of Netanyahu in Israel and
Donald Trump in the US, all the hopes invested in the Oslo Accords faded.
Netanyahu has ruthlessly expanded Israeli settlements in Occupied Palestinian
territory in the West Bank and turned the Gaza Strip into the biggest open air
prison for the Palestinians there. In these circumstances, why has Oman opened its
doors to Israel again? To seek an answer to this question, one has to admit
that the Arab world almost without exception has in practice abandoned the Palestinian
cause, lip service notwithstanding. Oman may be interested in trade, particularly
the high tech and weaponry that Israel, with the unstinting support of
Washington, has been able to develop to dazzle the world. Its foreign minister
Yousuf bin Alawi has therefore made it clear that his country is not acting as
a mediator between Israelis and Palestinians. Currently, only two Arab
countries, Egypt and Jordan, have full diplomatic ties with Israel. But the
bulk of the rest of the Arab and Muslim world has increasingly looked not only
spineless against Israel’s cruelties visited upon the Palestinians, but of late
more and more inclined to explore openings to the Zionist entity.
Pakistan too has
flirted with Israel in recent years. Under the Musharraf regime, then foreign
minister Khurshid Kasuri met an Israeli deputy prime minister in Istanbul, but
a hostile domestic public opinion put paid to any further contacts in this
direction. On October 27, 2018, a furore broke out in the electronic media when
reports of an Israeli plane landing in Pakistan began doing the rounds. Furious
denials by our government did not entirely quell concerns about what exactly
was going on. There may be a lobby in Pakistan that is motivated to explore
possible openings with Israel for three reasons. One, India’s growing friendly relations
with Israel and its purchase of state-of-the-art weaponry from the latter may
have persuaded this lobby to not be left behind and lay the groundwork
discreetly for contacts with Israel with a view to the advanced weapons bonanza
that may follow. Two, relations with Israel may be viewed as a possible conduit
to improving Pakistan’s strained relations with the US. Three, implied in these
moves is a tacit abandonment of the Palestinian cause. This abandonment that
seems to be gathering pace in the Arab and wider Muslim world unfortunately
sees the Palestinian cause as hopeless by now. Part of this development may be
the aftermath of the 2011 Arab Spring, which led to regime change in many Arab countries,
principally (after US-led western interventions and invasions) Libya and Iraq.
The western juggernaut of regime change was only stopped in its tracks in
Syria, thanks to Russia, Iran and the Lebanese Shia militia Hezbollah. But the
Syrian conflict brought into sharp focus the sectarian divide and rivalry between
Shia Iran and the largely Sunni Arab world. With hindsight, despite its progress
towards regime change in the Arab world being stymied in Syria, the Arab Spring
has metamorphosed into co-opting the Arab and parts of the Muslim world into
Israel’s corner because of antipathy towards Iran. Pakistan has to be careful
to play its cards in its own interests in this intricate minuet rolling out and
while guarding against being sucked into the sectarian maelstrom unfolding in
the region.
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