Foreign Ministry Director-General Dore Gold explains to the ‘Post’ that European perspective is beginning to sound a little bit more like Israel’s perspective on security issues.
Around bowls brimming with cut apples, sticky glass containers full of honey, and dishes piled high with pomegranates, Israelis around the country will – over their upcoming Rosh Hashana meals – discuss and argue the state of the nation on the eve of the new year.
More likely than not, one of the common themes will be how bad everything looks: how the economy is tanking, the security situation is deteriorating and the diplomatic situation is worsening. Many of the complaints to be aired among family and friends over the next two days will assuredly deal with Israel’s position in the world, and the perception that many people have that the Jewish state’s global standing has never been worse.
Those people should go meet Foreign Ministry Director-General Dore Gold.
Gold, a veteran diplomat who in June moved from heading the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs over to his new position at the Foreign Ministry, does not have the demeanor of an alarmist.
If anything, his bearing and manner of speaking are those of an anti-alarmist. He weighs each word, tries to put things in context.
And all this comes out clearly when he is asked a simple opening question: “How are we doing?”
“A mistaken impression exists that Israel is facing a new level of diplomatic isolation, but when you sit in the office of the director-general of the Foreign Ministry, you quickly understand that is simply not true,” he tells The Jerusalem Post from a comfortable armchair in his office.
First, he says, Israel’s relations in Asia are opening up; and second, Israel is not as isolated in the region as many people believe.
“The Arab world is interested in talking to Israel,” Gold says, then states the obvious that this dialogue is not out in the open. “But it exists, and I point to the fact that Israel has many common interests with the Arab countries and is far from being as isolated, as some people try to assert.”
The problem, of course, is that all contact with the moderate Sunni states – contact to which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu often alludes, but on which he never elaborates – seems to be happening out there somewhere in a closet.
This raises the question: If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? Or, in the world of diplomacy, if talks with the Saudis are taking place but nobody knows about them and it is not trickling down to the people to change their attitudes, does it matter? Gold, stressing diplomatically that he is not saying whom Israel’s contacts are with, says that “not everything has to be reported in the newspaper or appear on television. But when there are official contacts that exist that perhaps 20 years ago were hard to imagine, that is an important change.
“My point is very simple,” he continues, “Israel is a country with a foreign policy machine that is very active, and Israel has many new friends in the world.”
“We have been very European-centered in the past, and Europe is still probably our most important trading partner, but there are other relationships emerging at the same time, and one has to be cognizant of them before reaching the conclusion that Israel is in a more precarious position today diplomatically than it was before,” he says, referring to growing ties with India, China, Japan and Vietnam.
“That perspective is dramatically changing today, and the Europeans are becoming more worried about these waves of people who are coming from Syria and Iraq into their territory, and are beginning to think much more seriously about their need to have defensible borders for Europe.”