Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September 1998, pages 38-40

Issues in the News

Compiled by Shawn L. Twing

Arabian Peninsula

Saudi Arabia Opens Internet Access:

Saudi Arabia will allow its citizens access to the Internet beginning early next year, the English-language daily Saudi Gazette reported July 12. “Internet access for the general public will be allowed in Riyadh, Jeddah and Damman around January. It will then be extended, in stages, to the rest of the Kingdom,” Walid Aba Al-Khail, the head of a Saudi Internet study group, told the Gazette. Saudi Arabia’s King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology is studying ways to prevent “access to information which is contrary to our Islamic values and endangers our security,” Al Khail said.

Saudi Oil Exports to the U.S. Increase:

Saudi Arabia increased its petroleum exports to the United States from 1.26 million barrels per day (bpd) in the first quarter of 1997 to 1.33 bpd in the first quarter of 1998, the English-language daily Arab News reported in July. The increase makes Saudi Arabia the single largest crude oil exporter to the United States, ahead of Venezuela and Mexico, which exported 1.32 and 1.31 million bpd, respectively, during the same period.

Security Council Allows Kuwait to Sell Abandoned Iraqi Tankers:

Kuwait will sell five damaged oil tankers abandoned by Iraq in Kuwaiti coastal waters during the 1991 Gulf war, Kuwaiti officials announced following United Nations Security Council approval of the sale in July. The five Iraqi vessels, which currently are eight miles off the Kuwaiti coast, have been assessed as scrap and pose an environmental hazard to Kuwait, according to analysts. Iraqi forces deliberately punctured the hulls of the tankers to pour oil into the Gulf prior to the U.S.- and Saudi-led Operation Desert Storm. Iraqi Foreign Minister Sayed Al Sahaf protested the sale to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and insisted that Iraq would bring legal action against anyone who purchases the five tankers from Kuwait.

Bahrain Oil Output Increases:

Bahrain’s annual petroleum output increased 12 percent in 1997 to 58.4 million barrels of oil, according to the Dow Jones newswire. Although onshore production increased slightly, offshore production was primarily responsible for the marked increase. Offshore output increased 16.6 percent in 1997, mainly because of the Abu Sa’fah oilfield which Bahrain shares with Saudi Arabia. In 1995, Saudi Arabia gave Bahrain most of Abu Sa’fah’s output of some 140,000 barrels per day.

Oman Sets Minimum Wage:

Private sector Omani employees must be paid at least 100 Omani riyals ($260) per month, according to new guidelines issued by Oman’s ministry of social affairs, labor and vocational training. Employers also must provide transportation and accommodations to their Omani employees, or pay an additional 20 riyals ($52) per month, Muscat’s Asharq Al-Awsat reported July 5.

Dubai Cheapest of Six Gulf Cities According to Global Survey:

Dubai is the cheapest Gulf city to live in for expatriates, a Geneva-based consultancy firm reported in July. Dubai is ranked 30th of 172 cities, including six in the Gulf, surveyed by the Corporate Resources Group. Others were: Abu Dhabi (44), Riyadh (33), Kuwait City (34), Jeddah (39) and Manama (41). Muscat and Doha were not included in the survey. Outside the Gulf, Tel Aviv was ranked the most expensive city for expatriates in the Middle East and North Africa, while Algiers was the least expensive in the same region.

Fertile Crescent

King Hussein Meets Shimon Peres:

Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres met in Amman with Jordan’s King Hussein July 13 to discuss the faltering Arab-Israeli peace process. Delivering a lecture at a U.N.-sponsored leadership conference, Peres said that “the time has come for changing the Israeli government in order to advance the peace process through an Israeli implementation of its commitments to the Palestinians.” Prior to the conference, Peres told reporters that the government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was not working on advancing Arab-Israeli peace “as energetically and as rightly as it should,” the German Press Agency reported.

Lebanon Boosts Economic Growth:

Lebanon’s economy rebounded slightly in the first half of 1998, according to economic statistics released by Lebanon’s central bank. Economic growth reached 5 percent, up from 4 percent in 1997. Inflation also improved, falling from 8 percent in 1997 to 5 percent in the first half of 1998.

Syria Appoints New Chief of Staff:

General Ali Aslan was sworn in as Syria’s armed forces chief of staff July 5, replacing Hikmat Shehabi, who served in that capacity for nearly 25 years. Ultimately, however, “the Syrian Army remains the responsibility of President Hafez Al-Assad,” Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass told Agence France Presse.

Turkish Quake Damages U.S. Base:

Several buildings on the joint U.S.-Turkey airbase in Incirlik were damaged in June during an earthquake that killed some 130 people in and around Adana in eastern Turkey. Incirlik is home to approximately 2,500 U.S. military personnel and their families, and is a base of operations for U.S. aircraft enforcing “no-fly” zones over Iraq. Following the quake, cracks appeared in a chapel and a department store on the airbase. “Neither of them are operationally crucial,” U.S. Air Force Captain Max Torrance told Reuters.

Turkey Plans $160 Million Undersea Water Pipeline to Cyprus:

Turkey is planning to build a $160 million underwater pipeline from its southern coast to northern Cyprus to help alleviate the water shortage there, the German Press Agency reported in July. Turkish firms already have started a feasibility study for the project, which will supply some 75 million cubic meters of water through a pipeline 60 to 70 meters underwater. Currently, Turkish tugboats pull massive water-filled balloons carrying 10,000 cubic meters of water each. This method will provide Cyprus some three million cubic meters of water annually in 1999, rising to seven million cubic meters per year after 2000.

Iran/Iraq

Former Hostage Taker Says U.S. Seeks to “Humiliate” Iran:

A leader of the group of Iranians who took 52 Americans hostage in 1979 accused the United States of trying to “humiliate” Iran with its recent offers of normalizing relations between the two countries. In an editorial published in the moderate newspaper Rahe-No, Abbas Abdi wrote that “the main and sole objective of the United States is to humiliate the Iranian people.” Abdi, who is chief editor of the leftist newspaper Salam, was a member of the group which seized the American Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979 and held its American staff and visitors hostage in Tehran for 444 days. “If the Americans succeed in re-isolating Iran, they will intensify their pressure to bring the Iranian people to their knees,” he wrote.

Iraq Denounces “No-Fly” Zones:

Iraq called on the United Nations to end the “no-fly” zones in the northern and southern parts of the country July 1, one day after a U.S. warplane attacked an Iraqi radar site. “We expect the U.N. [Security] Council... to discard the two air exclusion zones, not just to condemn the latest aggression,” the government-run Al-Jumhuriya daily said. One day earlier, a U.S. F-16 fired a high-speed anti-radiation missile (HARM) at a mobile Iraqi surface-to-air missile site that U.S. and British forces confirmed had targeted British aircraft enforcing the “no-fly” zone in southern Iraq. U.S. Defense Department officials later confirmed that the missile did not hit its intended target.

Israel/Palestine

Barak, Netanyahu Swap Insults:

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and opposition Labor Party leader Ehud Barak exchanged personal slurs and accusations of blame for the failure of the peace process during a July 6 speech by Netanyahu before the Israeli Knesset. Barak accused Netanyahu of being out of touch with Israeli politics and relying almost entirely on American “spin doctors” for advice. Several times Barak repeated the phone number of Netanyahu’s American adviser, Arthur Finkelstein, saying that he was the only person left for Netanyahu to talk to. “Arafat is not willing to talk to you,” Barak said. “Bill Clinton doesn’t listen to you. Madeleine Albright is tired of your words. King Hussein refuses to talk to you. President Mubarak is not willing to respond to you. Our president refuses to help you...Whom will you call, who will answer you?” Barak asked. “Instead of peace, you are bringing us closer to war.”

When Netanyahu took the podium for his first Knesset address about the peace process in seven months, he lashed out at Barak personally and scolded the Labor Party in general. “I think Barak is suitable,” Netanyahu began sarcastically, “to be the head of opposition for many years.” Turning to the Labor Party, Netanyahu said, “don’t talk to us [in the Likud Party] about credibility. What you should do is sit quietly and with your heads bowed in shame,” he said while wagging his finger at Labor Party members.

Peres Credits Israel’s Nuclear Weapons Capability for Oslo Accords:

Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres gave the first clear public admission of Israel’s nuclear weapons program while visiting King Hussein in Jordan. Speaking in Amman July 13, Peres said that Israel had “built a nuclear option not in order to have a Hiroshima, but an Oslo,” referring to the peace agreement signed by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the White House South Lawn Sept. 13, 1993.

“We thought the reasons Israel was attacked five times without any provocation was because some of our neighbors thought they could overpower us, and we wanted to create a situation in which this temptation would no longer exist,” he said. “I think without [Israel’s nuclear weapons program], we would not have the Oslo agreement.” Peres is credited with being a driving force behind Israel’s clandestine nuclear program which is thought to include between 200 and 400 nuclear weapons.

Settlement Building More Than Doubled in Past Year:

The number of homes built for Jewish settlers in Israeli-occupied territories more than doubled in the beginning of 1998, according to Israeli statistics published in July. Work started on at least 730 new homes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the first four months of 1998, a 130 percent increase over the 310 settler homes started during the same period last year, Israel’s National Institute of Statistics reported. “These figures prove there are two economies of differing speed for the government of Binyamin Netanyahu,” a Peace Now spokesman told Agence France Presse. “There is one economy for Israel, where new buildings fell by 20 percent between January and April, and another economy for the settlements, which is subsidized by the state,” Mossi Raz said.

Israel Plans Negev “Mt. Rushmore”:

Israel’s Negev desert soon will be the eternal home of a former American president, former Israeli prime minister, and former Egyptian president, according to the Jerusalem Report. The faces of Jimmy Carter, Anwar Sadat, and Menachem Begin—the three signatories of the landmark 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace accords—will be carved into a desert cliff in the Negev, part of a $10 million park that will surround the grave of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. “The idea of having Begin, his bitter rival, peering over him for posterity isn’t likely to help [Ben-Gurion] lie easy in his grave,” the Report commented.

Peace Now Exposes JNF Extremism:

After months of trying to meet with officials of the Jewish National Fund in Israel failed, Israel’s Peace Now movement and Ir Shalom (Whole City) project have “reluctantly gone public with a pattern of JNF behavior aimed at dispossessing Palestinian families of property in East Jerusalem for the exclusive benefit of extremist Jewish settler organizations,” according to a July 20 Americans for Peace Now press release.

“Since the late 1980s, JNF has been closely linked with extremist settler organizations and [has] engaged in activities that are a sharp departure from its proud past,” said Debra DeLee, president and CEO of Americans for Peace Now. “It’s time for JNF to stop helping extremist settlers throw innocent people out of their homes,” she said.

In a short background paper, Americans for Peace Now explains the illegal mechanisms that are used to transfer land to the JNF, and then to extremist Jewish settlers. Under the Jewish National Fund’s charter, it cannot transfer land to non-Jews. After a pattern of abuse by the JNF was discovered by an Israeli investigative committee in 1992, then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin froze JNF’s illegal activities. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has since reactivated the mechanisms “to dispossess and repossess Palestinian properties,” according to the report. The full background paper is available from Americans for Peace Now, (202) 728-1893.

Israeli Police Arrest Jewish Human Rights Activists in Hebron:

A group of six Israeli human rights activists were arrested in Hebron in July after painting over anti-Arab hate graffiti in the city’s Israeli-controlled main market. Beginning on a Friday afternoon when most of Hebron’s Muslims were home with their families, members of the Human Rights Defenders Team, armed with paint brushes, scrapers and paint thinner, painted over hate graffiti like “Death to Arabs” and statements eulogizing Baruch Goldstein, the Brooklyn-born Jewish settler who murdered 29 Palestinians at prayer in Hebron’s Ibrahimi mosque in February 1994.

The team was arrested the next day by Israeli police. Following five hours of questioning, members were released after they signed a statement saying they would not return to Hebron for one month. The graffiti “is a problem for all Jews and Arabs,” said activist Charles Lenchner, leader of the Human Rights Defenders Team. “We are taking a stand here against all those who write ‘Death to Arabs,’ and we are in solidarity with Arabs who want to live peacefully, especially the 20 percent of Hebron still under occupation,” he said. A week after his arrest in Hebron, Lenchner was summoned by police in Tel Aviv and “was warned about going to Hebron and cooperating with peace groups there,” according to a report from Christian Peacemaker Teams in Hebron.

IDF Writes Off 59 Settlements:

Israel’s defense establishment submitted a detailed security map to the Knesset in July that showed Israel needs only 50 percent of the West Bank to protect itself from external threats, Israel’s Ma’ariv Hebrew-language newspaper reported. To the surprise of right-wing Knesset members, 59 of Israel’s 159 illegal West Bank settlements were not deemed vital to Israel’s security, and were omitted from the map. The map showed a one-to-two-kilometer buffer zone along the western slope of the West Bank, a 20-kilometer zone along the Jordan River, an area encircling greater Jerusalem (encompassing Gush Etzion and Ma’ale Adumim settlements) that reached almost all the way to Jericho, and areas alongside main roads in the West Bank.

Israel Wants to Buy Algerian LNG:

The Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) is negotiating with Australia’s BHP multinational company to purchase liquefied natural gas from Algeria, Israel’s Jerusalem Post reported in July. Israel has no diplomatic relations with Algeria and does not publish details of trade with the North African state, according to the Post.

Sheikh Yassin Will Not Join PA:

After returning from a successful fund-raising trip throughout the Middle East, Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin rejected an offer to join the Palestinian Authority, the Jerusalem Post reported in July. Speaking to reporters at his home in Gaza, Yassin said that Hamas would agree to a cease-fire if Israel were to withdraw from all territories it captured in 1967 and “there won’t be a trace of the occupation, not a settlement or anything.” Sheikh Yassin also said that he would not respond to an offer from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to join the Palestinian Authority. “I will support a state when the occupation is gone,” he said. “I am against establishing a state while the occupation continues because it would be a worthless state.” The Hamas leader refused to confirm or deny Israeli reports that he had raised some $50 million while abroad. “Let them say what they want and imagine what they want,” he said.

North Africa

Berbers Decry Algerian Arabization:

Hundreds of Berber activists took to the streets in Algiers in early July to protest an Algerian government decision to enforce a new law that makes Arabic compulsory for official business, Reuters reported. Some five million Algerians are believed to speak Tamazight, or Berber, and activists have long sought to have their language recognized officially by the Algerian state. Algeria’s Arabization policy began in the early 1970s in an attempt to break from its French-colonial past. The new law, which codifies that policy, provides for fines of up to 10,000 dinars (approximately $170) for officials or business representatives who sign any contract or other official correspondence not written in Arabic.

Al-Azhar Mosque Repairs Complete:

Repairs to Cairo’s more than 1,000-year-old Al-Azhar mosque were completed in July, following a 22-month, $1.3 million restoration project. Egyptian officials, including President Hosni Mubarak, attended a special ceremony to mark the event. The project is thought to be the first substantial repair work done on the mosque since 970 AD. The mosque, thought to be among the oldest in the world, suffered considerable damage during a devastating 1992 earthquake. Restoration officials said that 65 columns had to be reinforced, and 22 corridors, six minarets, eight gates and several classrooms were restored. Egypt’s Culture Minister Farouq Hosni told the German Press Agency that the Al-Azhar project was the first step in a comprehensive restoration plan for Egypt’s hundreds of ancient monuments that began in 1998.