Moroccan Monarch’s Funeral Spotlights Middle East Changes

By Lucille Barnes

As world leaders assembled for the second time this year for the funeral of a venerable Middle Eastern monarch, both their actions and their words in Rabat gave credence to hopeful visions of a Middle East at peace.

U.S. President Bill Clinton, whose previous visit to the Middle East had been for the funeral in Amman of Jordan’s late King Hussein, joined French President Jacques Chirac for a three-mile uphill walk at the head of the cortege immediately behind the casket, on a gun carriage, of Moroccan King Hassan II, 14th ruler in an Alawite dynasty unbroken for more than 400 years that traces its lineage, like that of Jordan’s ruling family, to the Prophet Muhammad.

Clinton was the first U.S. president to visit Morocco since Dwight D. Eisenhower. But for First Lady Hillary Clinton, who accompanied her husband and daughter Chelsea, to Rabat, it was the third trip to Morocco this year. The American delegation included National Security Adviser Samuel Berger and State Department peace process director Dennis Ross, along with former U.S. President George Bush and his secretary of state, James Baker III.

Guests, who included some 20 kings, princes and heads of state, were met at the airport by King Hassan’s second son and now crown prince, Moulay Rachid, 29, and were received in the Royal Palace by the former king’s 36-year-old eldest son, who henceforth will be known as King Mohammad VI. The new king, who reportedly was quietly married in order to qualify him for the rulership between the time of his 70-year-old father’s death and his assumption of the throne, is, not surprisingly, a close friend of Jordan’s new King Abdullah, 37, who attended the funeral.While both are technically inclined and favorably disposed toward free markets, with Abdullah U.S.- and British-educated and Mohammad French-educated and Europe-oriented, it is likely that both will align their foreign policies more closely with their fellow Arab rulers, while striving to overcome the economic stagnation that plagues both their economies, and, in the case of Morocco, the staggering 50 percent illiteracy rate,

In Rabat all eyes were on the Israeli delegation, which included newly elected Prime Minister Ehud Barak, whose itinerary since he assumed office only two weeks earlier had included Egypt and Jordan, but who also had made visits at the head of assassination squads to Beirut in 1973 and Tunis in 1988. It was a “return of the native” for Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy, who was born in Morocco and left at age 20 for Israel, which now has a population of some 400,000 Moroccan Jews. Other Israeli mourners were Israeli President Ezer Weizmann, a former air force pilot who is well-regarded by his one-time Arab enemies, and former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who, like the late Israeli general Moshe Dayan, had made secret visits to Morocco on missions that led, eventually, to Israeli-Arab peace negotiations.

Peres saw the mingling of Arab and Israeli guests as vindication of his dream of a “new Middle East” in which Israel will be accepted by its Arab neighbors. “The new king approached me and hugged and kissed me,” Peres said on Israeli radio, speaking of Mohammad VI. “Many people approached me that I didn’t even know…I didn’t feel that there was one person in the VIP hall who wanted war.”

Valid or not, the Peres dream was interrupted by his electoral loss in 1996 to Binyamin Netanyahu, who, for three years, put land-for-peace negotiations in such a deep freeze that, since his election, Barak has been unwilling even to carry out the withdrawals that Netanyahu agreed to—but then reneged on—at the Wye Plantation talks in October 1998.

Barak exchanged bear hugs with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, whom he had just visited in Cairo, and also had at least two precedent-breaking encounters. Most surprising was a seven-minute conversation with newly installed Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who embraced Barak and told him, “We attach high hopes on your peace plan…We are ready to contribute whenever asked.”

Barak also was introduced by Clinton to Kuwaiti Crown Prince Shaikh Saad Al Abdullah Al Sabah, another first encounter, although two of the other Gulf Cooperation Council states, Qatar and Oman, have hosted Israeli leaders and diplomats at international conferences in their countries.

A disappointment for peace seekers was the last minute cancellation by President Hafez al-Assad of Syria, perhaps because of ill health or perhaps to avoid just such encounters. Syria was represented instead by Vice President Mohammed Zuhair Masharqa. For their part, Clinton, Barak and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat held a brief meeting, the first such three-way event involving Barak. The U.S. and Palestinian presidents subsequently met again for 40 minutes before returning to their countries. A glimpse of the remaining obstacles to Middle East peace was provided by another member of the U.S. delegation, Rep. Benjamin Gilman (R-NY), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, whose Arab-bashing policies are indistinguishable from those of Israel’s hard-line Likud party. “I was very worried about the president,” he told the Los Angeles Times.

Some of Gilman’s pro-Israel colleagues in the U.S. also are worried, but about possible future presidents. They are pleased with presidential candidate George W. Bush’s appointment as an adviser to his campaign of former Reagan administration Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle and accepting of the appointment of former Bush administration Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. However, they knew little about appointee Condoleeza Rice, who was the Bush administration’s director of European Affairs at the National Security Council.

Among those who turned out to hear her speak on “Russia’s Destabilizing Policies in the Middle East” at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention in May were the Israeli Embassy in Washington’s second in command, Lenny Ben-David, who used to be AIPAC’s second in command when he was Leonard Davis in the 1970s, and AIPAC director of foreign policy issues Steve Rosen. After a lively talk in which she criticized the Clinton administration, saying that “a policy that was overly optimistic…is now at a dead end,” she left before the question period.

It was the Iranian government’s closure of the pro-reform newspaper Salam that brought Tehran University students into the streets in early July, shaking the Islamic Republic government to its core—or cores, since it apparently contains both moderates and hard-liners competing to run things. Clearly the latter are in charge of the nation’s courts, one of which on July 25 found Salam publisher Mohammad Mousavi-Khoeiniha guilty of publishing “insulting language, misinformation, and a classified document.” A special clerical court will issue a final judgment, according to the Iranian News Agency.

Douglas E. Mirell , founder of the Progressive Jewish Alliance, in a July 26 article in the Los Angeles Times, pointed to the irony in the fact that only one week after House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-MO) withdrew his nomination of Los Angeles Muslim activist Salam al-Marayati to the National Commission on Terrorism, following criticism of the nomination by U.S. Jewish organizations, newly elected Israeli Prime Minister Barak appointed Israeli Arab Knesset Member Hashem Mahameed to the Knesset’s Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee. Hard-line Israeli nationalists, led by former Likud Defense Minister Moshe Arens, offered a no-confidence motion against Barak’s government. Unlike Gephardt, however, Barak didn’t back down. Maybe they don’t have pro-Israel PACs in Israel.

Lucille Barnes covers Washington, DC for U.S. and Middle East publications.