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Remembered in Kurdistan
17.8.2007
By Zvi Bar'el
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August
17, 2007
Kurdistan region (northern Iraq) -- "Do you
want an answer on the record or a real answer?"
asked a senior member of the Kurdistan Regional
Government. I said I wanted both.
"On the record, I will tell you that the political
conditions today do not make it possible to maintain
independent relations with Israel. Iraq is one
country, which includes Kurdistan, and the decision
must come from Baghdad."
The real answer was: "We would like very much to
develop relations with you, but not publicly. There
are ways you can help us today far more than ever
before."
The ties between Israel and the Kurds were severed
almost in one fell swoop in the mid-1970s, and since
then Israel has vanished from the scene. But not the
memories.
At every corner, office, street and booth where I
could say I was from Israel, the response was a
thumbs-up, sometimes with both thumbs, or the word
"brothers," spoken in English. Some spoke of a
feeling of betrayal or abandonment, others as though
they had lost family.
At every opportunity, someone spoke longingly about
a Jewish friend or neighbor who had emigrated to
Israel, and one person even had images from Israel
as his screen saver.
The memories and nostalgia for friendship with
Israel are now awaiting revival because the list of
needs in Kurdistan is very long: an infrastructure
for banks and insurance companies; agricultural
technology of the sort Israel rushes to sell every
fraction of a tribe in Africa, the Caucasus and East
Asia; delegation exchanges of physicians and
academics; scholarships for students from the
University of Sulaimaniyah and Salah al-Din
University in Erbil; donations of books and
medicines so it will no longer be necessary to buy
only substandard medicines from the countries of the
region; and solar technology, which will save the
expensive fuel that Iraq is not supplying in
sufficient quantities.
True, there will be no ribbon-cutting ceremonies
here when an Israeli project is launched because
Kurdistan is part of Iraq, even if its citizens
detest the Baghdad regime. Kurdistan receives its
budget from the Iraqi budget, and the oil and gas
for cars are, in the meantime, arriving from Iraq,
too. The Kurds want to maintain their ties with Iraq
because that is the entry and departure gate for the
Kurdish economy and an alternative if the Turks
should close the gate. The Kurds are perforce also
"friends" of Syria because of the suppressed Kurdish
majority that lives there. Accordingly, no public
hobnobbing with Israel is possible in these
circumstances.
Israel will not be able to make propaganda capital
out of the fact that it is aiding the Kurds, and
Foreign Ministry officials will not be able to
record the relations in their periodic reports. But
the Kurds will record them.
Israel, which always sought friends in the world and
did not balk at friends of the corrupt and criminal
type - from South America to despots in the former
Soviet Union - chose cynically to distance itself
from the Kurds, of all people. Israel now fears that
renewing the ties with the Kurds will harm its
strategic relations with Turkey, which, as a matter
of fact, is doing very good business with Kurdistan:
Hundreds of Turkish commercial firms have
investments there.
Nor does Israel want to clash with American
interests. Washington views the Kurds' ambitions for
a federation as an effort to undermine Iraqi unity -
Washington's great goal. This is the same Washington
that doesn't yet know who is a friend and who an
enemy in Iraq, but is conveniently ignoring the
Kurds and even their request for an American
military base to be built in Kurdistan. |
Zvi Bar'el
Three friends with Kurdistan flag (L), American flag
(M) and Israeli flag (R). ekurd.net
65 per cent of Iraqi Kurds think that diplomatic
relations between the Kurdistan Regional Government
and Israel are "necessary" 22 per cent said it was
not necessary for the two states to have relations,
while 12 per cent responded that they did not have
an opinion. Those Kurds who believed that the
Kurdistan Regional Government and Israel should have
relations cited the possible strengthening of the
Kurds' position in the region, Israel's democracy,
trade (between the two states) Poll by Kurdish
Hawlati newspaper issued in Kurdistan region (Iraq)
on June 9, 2006. Photos and text by ekurd.net |
Israel is also examining the "profit" it would gain
from renewing ties with the Kurds, and is not
convinced that the step will be bigger than an
antenna to eavesdrop on Iranian or Iraqi whisperings
from the mountain peaks of Kurdistan. As usual,
these are the small Israeli accounts.
But ties with the Kurds cannot be based on
accounting. They must be based on investment in
future commodities, and particularly on that
beautiful friendship of the past, which remains
alive in Kurdistan. Israel, which has been adept at
selling its distress and its need, and demanded that
the world put aside considerations based on vested
interests, is suddenly suffering from amnesia.
haaretz com
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