Statecraft in the Dark: Israel's Practice of Quiet Diplomacy by Aharon Klieman

Author:Aharon Klieman [Klieman, Aharon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367288754
Google: PYJ9zQEACAAJ
Goodreads: 53479195
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-06-30T00:00:00+00:00

Israel-Arab Discourse

Military aspects of the Arab-Israel dispute totally overshadow diplomatic interaction, even of the most basic kind. Raw, undisguised hostility is the only relationship most people are aware of between Israel, Palestinians, and the neighboring Arab states, with face-to-face encounters seemingly restricted (save for Sadat's 1977 initiative) exclusively to the battlefield. What provided Israel with the motivation for investing its political energies in cementing ties with extra-regional countries of Western Europe, the Americas and the Third World, if not traditional Arab aversion to "the artificial Zionist entity"?

The real picture of Israel's Arab diplomacy is considerably more complex, however; it is also far from inconsequential. We have a veteran diplomat's guarded word for it that "undeterred by rebuff and hostility, Israeli envoys continuously cultivated contacts with leading Arab personalities."20 Not only did Israel practise back-channel statecraft toward virtually every member of the Arab League; some of these approaches actually bore fruit. Indirect confirmation of the pervasiveness of this back-channeling comes from none other than Yasir Arafat. At the Arab summit in Amman in November 1987, the Palestinian leader insisted that "all the secret contacts with Israel be terminated forthwith"!21 While the full story, including even contacts with the PLO,22 awaits a future political scientist or historian, at least its outlines can already be sketched. To do so use is made here of: (a) the three outcomes (success, deadlock, tacit relations) known to secret diplomacy; and (b) partially documented episodes that have come to light in recent years. For it is now possible, in the late 1980s, to begin fleshing in some of the gray area that lies somewhere between total isolation and mutual accommodation, between peace and war in the Arab-Israel zone.

Israel's purpose in groping along the dim Arab back channels varies from country to country; it has depended on the specific set of circumstances current at any given moment. The general pattern, however, is for the interplay of deeper strategic objectives with shorter-term considerations. The latter have included such requirements as:

– negotiating the 1949 armistice accords as well as each of the subsequent ceasefire arrangements, and then seeing to their implementation;

– enforcement of calm along the several mutual borders;

– preventing the initiation, intensification or spread of hostilities;

– resolving amicably a whole blend of narrow issues that may crop up suddenly (pilgrim and tourist border crossings, drug smuggling, water and grazing rights, Red Cross visits, return of stolen property, etc.).

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