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President Maaouiya Ould Taya and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres
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NOUAKCHOTT
,
Mauritania
, October 9 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Mauritanian opposition
powers lashed out at Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres’s visit to
Mauritania
on Tuesday, October 8, who was the first senior Israeli leader to visit
Mauritania
since the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1999.
The
visit is an attempt to break the unified Arab stance, said Mohammad
Gamil, a Mauritanian opposition leader contacted by Qatar-based
Al-Jazeera satellite channel over the phone.
Peres
was greeted on his arrival in the capital
Nouakchott
by President Maaouiya Ould Taya. The Israeli minister later held talks
with his Mauritanian counterpart Dah Ould Abdi.
Peres
also met with Taya for talks which focused mainly on the two-year-old
Palestinian intifada, the Israeli foreign ministry said in a statement
that Agence France-Presse (AFP) received.
The
foreign minister claimed
Israel
would be willing to “withdraw immediately from the Palestinian cities
if the Palestinians take responsibility for the security situation” in
the
West Bank
and Gaza Strip, the statement said.
Peres
also assured Taya of his intention to “renew contacts in the near
future with Palestinian ministers,” the statement said.
Taya
called on
Israel
to resume peace talks with the Palestinians and put an end to the
suffering of the Palestinian population. The president had previously
insisted that
Israel
withdraw its troops from territory controlled by the Palestinian
Authority of Yasser Arafat.
Mauritania
, a member of the Arab League, wants
Israel
to re-start negotiations with the Palestinians with a view to creating a
Palestinian state.
After
talks with President Taya, Peres told the press
Nouakchott
was showing courage in promoting peace and was playing a very special
role in doing so. He also said that
Nouakchott
’s policy was based on “hope and not conflict.”
Peres
said that he briefed the Mauritanian leader on the situation in the
Middle East
and said their meeting was limited to political issues at the
president’s request.
Peres
is expected in
Paris
on Wednesday, October 9 talks with French President Jacques Chirac.
Furious
by the visit, Momahham Ben el-Mokhtar el-Shanqabti, a Mauritanian writer
living in the
U.S.
, wrote an article tracing Israeli-Mauritanian relations.
The
article, published Wednesday October 9, by Al-Jazeera on its web site,
said Israeli-Mauritanian clandestine contacts were launched in the late
90s with President Taya losing confidence in the country’s traditional
alley,
France
, and looking for new allies.
The
mission of contacts with
Israel
was assigned to Mauritanian Ambassador in Amman Mohammad Salem el-Aklah
who had served before as foreign minister and enjoys the trust of the
ruling regime.
Incumbent
Foreign Minister Ould Abdi, then Mauritanian Ambassador in
France
, also contributed to secret contacts with
Israel
. In 1999, Mauritanians and the whole world were dumbfounded by the
opening of liaison offices in
Nouakchott
and Tel Aviv.
More
surprisingly, in October 1999, an announcement was made in
Washington
on the setting up of diplomatic ties at the ambassadorial level between
Israel
and
Mauritania
.
The
agreement was sponsored by then U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright who promised the people of
Mauritania
to reap the fruits of agreement, a pledge that was never kept by the
U.S.
Later,
people found about that
Israel
was funding a project for the protection of palm trees in one
Mauritanian city under the cover of the U.N. anti-desertification
program in tandem with a businessman with a close ties with President
Taya. The program included the planting of Israeli palm trees in the new
presidential palace, said a project staff later.
The
list of Israeli organizations participating in the project, including
Peres
Peace
Center
, that it was not an innocent agricultural project but rather a
political drive for comprehensive normalization.
On
11 July 1999
, an Israeli medical team visited
Nouakchott
to operate eye surgeries on Mauritanian patients.
Israel
media did much propagation for the visit but ignored to report the story
of a Mauritanian young man working in the national hospital in
Nouakchott
who, outraged by the presence of Israelis, slapped one of the Israeli
doctors on the face.
A
delegation of the Israeli Knesset paid a visit to
Mauritania
in April 2000 and was welcomed by President Taya in the presidential
palace. An Israeli-Mauritanian Friendship Society was set up at the
conclusion of the visit.
Israeli-Mauritanian
relations sparked off not only criticism inside the country and across
the Arab and Islamic worlds, but also surprise for several reasons.
Mauritania
is not neighboring the Jewish state, and therefore does not need to deal
with
Israel
.
Mauritania
is a remote country located outside the
Middle East
boundaries and its complications.
The
Mauritanian leadership did not initiate contacts with
Israel
at a time that would help save its face, like some Arab countries did
when launching contacts with
Israel
following the Madrid Conference or the Oslo Accords claiming, that the
then Israeli government was advocating peace with Arabs.
Mauritania
began engaging in clandestine contacts with
Israel
at the worst phase of the Palestinian cause and under the worst rightist
government in the history of the Jewish state.
Mauritania
began courting Israel when the relations between Israel and Arab
countries maintaining ties with Tel Aviv was getting from bad to worse
over the deteriorating and tragic situation in occupied Palestine.
Mauritania
was, therefore, swimming against the Arab and Islamic tide.
Israeli-Mauritanian
relations developed so suddenly and rapidly with any introduction and
the ties even developed into full normalization in no time compared to
other Israeli-Arab relations.
While
leaders of Arab countries having ties with Israel were trying hard to
slow down the pace of normalization to contain anger of their
anti-normalization peoples, the Mauritanian leadership took a different
course.
The
Mauritanian leadership attempted to justify encouraging relations with
the Jewish state. It claimed the motive was helping the Palestinians via
influential channels in the Jewish state, while in fact
Mauritania
hurt wounded
Palestine
even more by extending its hands to hawkish
Sharon
when his forces were killing Palestinians.
Mauritania
also alleged that establishing relations with
Israel
was only in implementation of the
Oslo
agreements and the Madrid Peace Conference, although Sharon himself had
deemed all these terms of reference null and void.
The
leadership even claimed that the “supreme interests” of the country
were behind promoting ties with
Israel
, an allegation refuted by the Mauritanian people through the media and
anti-normalization demonstrations.
Israel
, on its part, saw in ties with
Mauritania
a partial and symbolic compensation, at least where the media and
information are concerned, for its deteriorating relations with some
Arab countries over the tragic situation in
Palestine
.
Tel
Aviv wanted Mauritania to act as the “devil’s advocate” that is
whenever diplomatic siege gets tighter on Israel over its atrocities,
Nouakcott would rush to Israel’s aid to try an bust the diplomatic
siege.
This
happened in several occasions including a visit by the Mauritanian
premier to
Israel
after Benjamin Netanyahu’s win of premiership elections which was met
with a storm of Arab uproar.
It
also happened when the Mauritanian foreign minister visited
Israel
at the climax of the Palestinian Intifada, the
Israel
invasion and reoccupation of all Palestinian self-rule areas and the
subsequent Arab summit resolution to freeze all contacts with the Jewish
state.
The
same pattern was repeated when the Mauritanian ambassador in Tel Aviv
attended in May Israel’s celebration of its independence day in May,
which was boycotted by both the Egyptian and Jordanian ambassadors in
protest of the Jenin and Ramallah massacres perpetrated by Israeli
forces against unarmed Palestinians.
At
that time, the ambassador stressed that Mauritanian-Israeli relations
were not affected by the “current events”, in reference to the
Israeli massacres.
Finally,
it happened when President Taya met in
South Africa
on September 5 with Peres on the sidelines of the Earth Summit, a
meeting that coincided with
Sharon
’s statements on writing off all agreements signed with the
Palestinians.
On
the Mauritanian side, the relations with Israel seems as a sort of
hiding strategy that leaders of third world countries resort to when
they lack political legitimacy.
After
a face-off with
France
in 1999 and the explosion of French military experts from the country,
President Taya wanted to improve ties with the
U.S.
very quickly and knew that the magic word was
Israel
.
Some
Arab and Israeli newspapers leaked reports about the real objectives of
the Israeli-Mauritanian relations which are kept under wraps.
On
March 12, 2001
, the Lebanese El-Nahar newspaper quoted a European diplomat as
saying that acting on the advice of the Israeli Mossad, President Taya
sacked some senior Mauritanian officers. The paper also said that the
Israeli Mossad has offices in
Mauritania
and that 100 Israeli experts were inside the country.
On
April 11, 2000
, the Israeli Jerusalem Post newspaper, reported that a shipment
of Mauritanian fish arrived in
Israel
a week before through an Italian company.
The
paper also added that
Mauritania
was “interested” in sending more students to study in
Israel
.
On
January 26, 1999
, the Moroccan Al-Ahdath newspaper quoted “well-informed”
sources as saying that the Mauritanian leadership received a handsome
sum of money from
Israel
in return for some specified “services”. Elaborating, the paper
cited an agreement by the two countries allowing
Israel
to use the vast Mauritanian desert to dump nuclear waste in swap for
some millions of dollars.
Some
military experts had also said that the Mauritanian desert would be the
perfect spot for
Israel
to test-fire its missiles, which is very hard to be done in the
populated Palestinian areas.
