Out of Gaza, Israel courts its neighbors

Only in the past two weeks has it emerged that Pakistan is seeking ties with the Jewish state. Pakistan's move to bring the diplomatic talks into the public sphere comes amid strong encouragement from the Bush administration.

"Israel is [viewed as] the ultimate friend of the US, so if you're a friend of Israel, you're a friend of the US," says Mr. Pedhatzur, a professor of strategic studies at Tel Aviv University.

But perhaps even more pressing for Pakistan is the Israel-Indian friendship that has flourished in recent years, one that includes a military dimension - and is therefore a concern for Pakistan.

Arab countries such as Qatar and Morocco, which had already initiated low-level ties with Israel during the years of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, have again shown interest in relations. Israel's foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, was due to meet the Qatari foreign minister Thursday. Also, earlier this week, the Qatari foreign minister called on other Arab nations to make gestures toward Israel.

"I salute this step by Israel," Sheik Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabor Al Thani said in a speech Wednesday at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, the AP reported. "Arab countries must take a step toward Israel through an international meeting or a meeting between Arab states and Israel and the cosponsors of peace, particularly the United States, in an attempt to come up with a clear vision to the period after Gaza," he said.

Also this week, an Iraqi politician visited Israel for the second time. His visit last year cost him his job as the director-general of the Supreme National Commission for the De-Baathification of Iraq. Mithal al-Alusi, speaking at a conference near Tel Aviv on terrorism's global impact, called for Iraqi counterterrorism cooperation with Israel and America.

"We will never be able to win the war against the terrorists if we don't work together and deal with them together," said Mr. al-Alusi, who has been the target of an assassination attempt since his last visit, and lost two sons in attacks in the past year.

The Muslim world remains riven over the issue. On Wednesday, a Palestinian religious group issued a fatwa, or Islamic religious decree, forbidding normalization with Israel, following the issuance of a fatwa earlier this week by Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, the head Egypt's al-Azhar Mosque University, that supported normalization.

Moshe Maoz, an expert on regional Arab states at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, says that other countries will only move forward if Israel makes steps to return to the road map to Middle East peace.

"Most Arab leaders cannot afford to make peace with Israel without settling the major issues, including Palestinian statehood and Jerusalem, and our leadership should at least take that into consideration and not just wait for the Palestinians to make a move," says Mr. Maoz. "They should not make it a precondition that they eradicate terrorism. Both sides need to work to give the Palestinians some hope that there will be a full-fledged Palestinian state."

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