Cold shoulder

On his first official visit to Cairo, the new Palestinian foreign minister received a cool welcome, reports Dina Ezzat

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Mahmoud Al-Zahhar

After years when Nabil Shaath and Farouk Qaddoumi were the faces of Palestine in the corridors of the Arab League and after a brief interval during which Nasser Al-Qedwa acted as the foreign minister of the Palestinian Authority, this week the Arab organisation played host to the first ever Hamas Palestinian foreign minister, Mahmoud Al-Zahhar.

At the beginning of an Arab tour, Al-Zahhar was accorded an adequate if not exceptional warm welcome by Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa who on Saturday and Sunday held no less than three rounds of talks with Al-Zahhar including an elegant working lunch on Sunday.

The Moussa-Al-Zahhar talks included a téte-â- téte session of which no details were revealed except what some Palestinian sources revealed were the bitter complaints expressed by the Palestinian official on what he qualified as a disappointing Arab stance in reaching out to the Palestinian people.

Al-Zahhar, Palestinian sources say, made an effort to hide his anger but was sure to tell Moussa that at a time when international donors have cut off their vital aid to the Palestinian people, it was the Arab world that should have jumped to the rescue of the Palestinians. Moussa, to quote the same Palestinian sources, asserted to his interlocutor that the Arab League will exercise maximum efforts to generate decent financial assistance to the disturbingly empty Palestinian coffers through governmental and non- governmental means.

Indeed, hours before Al-Zahhar's arrival in Cairo, Moussa launched an appeal for public donations to be made in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

"It is very disappointing for us to see that Arab countries are simply holding back their badly needed resources," commented one Palestinian source. He said that the general impression in the Hamas government is that Arab governments are withholding their aid in order to force the new Hamas government to succumb to the almost collective political will which aims to force it to declare its recognition of Israel and to publicly state its readiness to enter into peace talks with the Israeli government.

On record, Arab officials deny any arm- twisting but on background they argue that Hamas needs to know that once in government it has certain international responsibilities; recognising Israel is one of them. "This is not about Israel, it is about the interests of Palestinians that will not be served either on the political or financial levels if Hamas continued to stall on the declaration of its recognition of Israel," commented one Egyptian official. He added that for purposes of political pragmatism Hamas must talk the language the world is speaking: a negotiated settlement.

Sources say Al-Zahhar's reluctance to issue such a policy statement on his first visit to Cairo, at the launch of Hamas's first Arab tour since taking power in January, led to the Egyptian government according him a cool reception. He was not received by the president or his foreign minister. And only on very short notice, and upon Al-Zahhar's request, did he meet Omar Suleiman, the General Intelligence chief who has been acting as a hands-on officer of the Palestinian- Israeli file for several years.

During the meeting, which was off-limits to the press, Al-Zahhar, Palestinian sources say, was reminded that while Cairo is willing to support the Palestinian government out of respect for the choice the Palestinian people made at the ballot box, it will do so only within the long-standing framework of an Arab-Israeli peace process on the basis of a two-state solution. Al-Zahhar, sources add, listened politely but was still reluctant to make a public declaration of his government's recognition of the Israeli government or of the Arab peace initiative as an accepted basis for a settlement.

Adopted by the Arab summit in 2002, the Arab peace initiative calls for a comprehensive Arab- Israeli peace, the establishment of a Palestinian state on the territories occupied in 1967, a fair and legal settlement of the plight of close to five million Palestinian refugees and full Arab-Israeli normalisation.

"I listened to what the Arab League secretary- general said about the Arab peace initiative and I promised to take it to the government, to all policy-makers in Palestine and certainly to the Palestinian people," Al-Zahhar said in a joint press conference with Moussa on Saturday. Despite the many and repeated questions, Al-Zahhar declined to make any further statements. He instead seemed more interested in talking about the need of immediate support for the Palestinian people "on the basis of transparency" to dispel the concern of Arab capitals about mischanelling aid.

During his press conference with Moussa, Al-Zahhar warned that failing to reach out to the Palestinian people and pushing the Hamas government into a corner will not pull the government down simply because there is no other alternative. "It is unacceptable to starve the Palestinian people in order to topple the Hamas government," Al-Zahhar said.

However, as Arab officials insist, the choice is for the Hamas government to make. If it wishes to have governmental support it needs to offer assurances of political cooperation. Arab capitals, one Cairo-based Arab diplomat said, are not at all interested in getting into a confrontation either with Israel or with the US "not even when we know that Israel is reluctant to reach a serious and fair settlement. It is simply an unaffordable confrontation."

On his departure from Cairo, Al-Zahhar was given Arab League political and financial reassurances. But he was also offered Cairo's advice to exercise political realism. Whether he will accept the advice is not clear. What is certain, to quote Egyptian sources, is that any meeting with top Egyptian officials remains conditional on his willingness to acknowledge some political facts.