Arab peace may be elusive but Olmert gets handshakes
28 Nov 2007 19:58:49 GMT Source: Reuters
By Adam Entous WASHINGTON, Nov 28 (Reuters) - The handshakes at a Middle East peace conference may not have shaken the world but they did represent a small step for Israel in a region where symbols loom large. After Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert finished speaking at the Annapolis, Maryland, conference on Tuesday, he shook hands with envoys from Bahrain, Qatar, Morocco, Pakistan and Tunisia, his spokeswoman said. Israel has had contacts short of full normalization with most of the Arab countries whose envoys shook hands with Olmert, and there have been some high-level diplomatic contacts in the past. Spokeswoman Miri Eisin said the handshakes took place without fanfare and few words were exchanged. "He wasn't introduced formally to them," she said, but added: "There was a very positive feeling." Morocco and Tunisia closed Israeli offices in their countries with the outbreak of a Palestinian uprising in October 2000 and suspended ties, Israel's Foreign Ministry said. Israel and Bahrain do not have relations. A spokesman for Bahrain's embassy in Washington had no immediate comment. Egypt and Jordan are the only Arab states to make comprehensive peace with Israel. SAUDI SAYS NO No handshakes were exchanged either with the Saudi or Syrian envoys at the conference where Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to relaunch long-stalled negotiations on a Palestinian state. "We are not here for theater. We are here for the serious business of making peace. We are not here to give an impression that everything is normal," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told reporters on Monday. The brief encounters took place after Olmert told the conference that he hoped an Israeli-Palestinian agreement would lead to "peace with all Arab states." "There is not a single Arab state in the north, east or south with which we do not seek peace," Olmert said in his speech. Handshakes have been important symbols in past Middle East peacemaking. In 1979, when Egypt became the first of Israel's neighbors to sign a peace treaty with it, the deal was sealed with a handshake on the White House lawn between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. In 1993, with U.S. President Bill Clinton looking on, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, shook hands in public for the first time. (Reporting by Adam Entous, editing by Howard Goller and Jackie Frank)
