A stable, lasting peace - this has been the defined
goal of all Israeli governments, since Menachem Begin and
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat signed the Camp David
accord.
There is nobody who does not know and understand that
the only way to ensure that the goal of a stable and
lasting peace is attained, is through regional economic
and business co-operation. Policy shapers and major
company heads have no quarrel as to the fact that nothing
but economic development, the creation of hundreds of
thousands of new jobs and a rising standard of living,
are an essential, even if not a sufficient, guarantee for
attaining that lasting and long-desired peace.
The "New Middle East" of which former Foreign
Minister and Prime Minister MK Shimon Peres dreamed, was
an economic vision, designed to ensure that peace would
pay the inhabitants of the region an economic dividend.
The purpose of the Casablanca and Amman economic
conferences, and of the one due to be inaugurated next
week in Cairo, was to translate that sublime vision into
concrete, practical terms.
Both Rafi Benvenisti and Yossi Vardi were given the
title of "special adviser to the Minister of Finance", a
title they continue to bear even though a new government
is now in place in Israel. They drew up the regional
projects handbook for the Cairo Summit. The 20-project
portfolio is valued at some $26 billion. Meanwhile,
however, nothing has come of all the splendid ideas.
The vision remains on paper only, and this is not
necessarily due to the change of government in Israel.
The frustration and disillusionment initially kept
simmering below the surface among our nearest and more
remote neighbours, are suddenly fulminating and creating
that negative atmosphere that awaits Cairo Summit
delegates.
The Palestinian Manufacturers Association this week
released a statement expressly to the effect that the
only ones profiting from the peace process are the
Israelis, while the Arabs, and especially the
Palestinians, remain in precisely the same position as on
the eve of the Oslo accords. The Palestinians moreover
maintain that their situation is actually worse than it
was on the eve of the peace accords, primarily because of
the ongoing closure of the territories.
On the Israeli side, unsurprisingly, Minister of
National Infrastructures Ariel Sharon has announced that
neither he nor members of his staff will be going to
Cairo. They are staying away out of considerations of
honour; national honour, needless to say. Promptly
taking his lead from Sharon came businessman Shaul
Eisenberg, who announced that he won't be coming either,
because "the situation that has been created is not
conducive to business".
Most fascinating of all is what is taking place in
the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, chief sponsor of the
Cairo Summit.
David Levy's domain is home to three different
approaches. One of them, the nay-saying approach, found
vociferous expression in the Voice of Israel broadcasting
station on Tuesday, when it was stated that the Ministry
was having second thoughts about taking part in the
Summit. This is certainly an extreme position which, in
combination with Minister Sharon's down-turned thumb, is
liable to generate strong and forceful opposition within
the government to the entire peace process.
The second approach, heritage of former Foreign
minister Shimon Peres, favours taking part in the Cairo
Summit but adheres to the sublime vision of the New
Middle East. In other words, it opts to promote large-
scale international projects. The third school of
thought, prevailing in Foreign Minister Levy's immediate
orbit, favours aggressive and vigorous support for the
peace process, but is critical of the major projects
approach.
Not that the proponents of this school of thought
would recommend cancelling them. That, they believe,
would be politically inadmissible. They propose rounding
out the major, long-term projects with immediate, short-
term plans and joint ventures. In their opinion, the
Achilles heel of the "New Middle East" is the fact that,
to this day, there has been no economic or social
improvement in the Arabs' condition. Jordanians,
Palestinians, Egyptians, Moroccans and all other Arabs
party to the Casablanca and Amman conferences, are
convinced that Israel alone has profited from the peace
process. It is a fact that in Israel alone the standard
of living has risen for the past five successive years.
Only in Israel has product increased almost 50% in the
five year period. Only in Israel has unemployment
decreased from 12% in 1992 to 6% in 1996. The historic
truth of the matter is that the principal, if not the
sole cause of all this is the big wave of immigration
from the former Soviet Union, which was marginally helped
by the peace process, as creating an accommodating
atmosphere. But the Arabs do not see it that way. In
their view, the prosperity and growth being experienced
by Israel are a direct result of the peace process, while
the Arabs remain in the very spot where they stood prior
to September 13, 1993.
Whispering into the Foreign Minister's left ear are
ever more insistent advisers, urging that he lose no time
in adopting concrete plans that will enable the Arabs,
especially the Palestinians, the Jordanians, and the
Egyptians, to harvest the fruits of peace in the short
term, to savour it and bite into it even now, and not in
some shining, distant future that will arrive who knows
when.
These voices maintain that the projects must be
restructured and brought down to eye level for our
neighbours. Every effort must be made, they urge, to
prevent a situation in which these people become hewers
of wood and drawers of water for Israel or in which they
witness an Israeli take-over of their businesses.
The general idea being urged upon Foreign Minister
David Levy is that the economic process must be
depoliticised, by means of secondary conferences on
sectarian matters such as food, textiles, chemicals,
tourism and so forth, co-opting as many private,
civilian, concerns as possible.
A new idea making the rounds of the Foreign Ministry
is that of creating a regional capital market, and even a
regional stock exchange, to channel inflows of capital
from Europe, Japan and the United States to the private
market. The object is to pull the vision down onto the
terra firma of reality, and recast the grandiose plans
in concrete, human dimensions.