CAIRO: I’m not at all among those who denounce the aggressive statements of Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who is incidentally implicated in some corruption cases, and those who urge to boycott him because of his racism.
Rather I call for dialogue with him, provided that it’s a real “dialogue , meaning that it should be a bilateral talk between two parties discussing the same subject and not a one-sided “monologue where each side talks about a subject different from the other.
Since he assumed the post and even before that, the Israeli FM has demonstrated that he was a man of intransigence, telling the world that he doesn’t make any concessions. He even went deeper to threaten his major neighbor, the first Arab country which signed a peace accord with Israel, to bomb a source of Egyptian pride, the High dam, to trigger a flood of destruction in the country’s pride, dignity, economy, security, stability and safety.
Carrying on with this dialogue we continued playing the peace tune, emphasizing that it is our strategic option, just as the Israeli army continued beating the drums of war with the words of its officials. They have the right to do so, whereas we are not allowed to use a fraction of their threatening tone as it would be considered a breach of the peace accords and an unacceptable menace to the existence of Israel, something which would threaten world peace with its anti-Semitic feelings.
Can anyone imagine what would be the case if Egypt’s Foreign Minister, applying the reciprocity rule in this dialogue with his Israeli peer, and after some warm greetings, should make a similar threat of bombing the Dimona nuclear reactor at the Negev desert? Can anyone possibly imagine the world’s reaction to such a threat from Egypt’s side? Can anyone justify the silence prevalent in the world regarding Israel’s similar threats?
We have to confront this lopsided relationship because we originated the faults within it, as we didn’t grasp the language of the dialogue but kept uttering the same pacifying old words confirming that we abide by the Arab peace initiative. Ironically this coincided with the Israeli Foreign Minister’s announcement that he is not committed to agreements made by previous governments including that at Annapolis which stated clearly that the settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute hinges on the creation of a Palestinian state.
Who knows, maybe the Arab states don’t want to have two states anyway, because if they did, they wouldn’t have needed no Annapolis, metropolis, or Heliopolis but would have resorted to the United Nations partition plan stipulating that there should be both a Jewish and a Palestinian state. It is the very same resolution from which Israel’s legitimacy springs. Since Israel was founded without any recourse to negotiations with the Arab side, why should the Arabs negotiate with Israel to found the other half of the same resolutoin?
Actually if we wanted to create a Palestinian state we have the UN resolution and quite a number of other international agreements, the last of which being Annapolis, that support the two-state solution, but which the Israeli foreign minister rejects outright. So does he also reject the partition plan which also calls for a two-state solution and which is the very base of Israel’s legitimacy?
Certainly the foreign minister accepts the United Nations resolution on partition, yet he rejects the Annapolis agreement. If we conduct this dialogue as a one-sided monologue rather than a bilateral dialogue, we will end up in a vicious circle, with them speaking the language of war and we speaking the language of peace.
I wonder what would happen if Israel, under increasing world pressure, were finally to speak the language of peace. At that long and dearly-awaited moment, would we still be able to speak the language of war that we have long-forgotten?
Mohamed Salmawyis President of the Arab Writers’ Union and Editor-in-Chief of Al-Ahram Hebdo.
