FM: Arabs must build bridges with Israel to help Palestinians

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said yesterday that dialogue with Israel is the key for Arab states wanting to help the Palestinians.

Speaking on Channel 10, Shalom, just back from a groundbreaking trip to Tunis, said that the fact he was able to land there on an Israeli aircraft at the head of an official Israeli delegation and to sit down to dinner with the heads of state of Tunisia, Lebanon, Algeria and Sudan and the prime ministers of Bahrein and Qatar was a sign that Israel's pariah status in the Arab and Muslim world is waning.

"You ask yourself, `Is this really happening?"' Shalom said, adding that in the past a high-level Israeli presence at an international gathering would have prompted a walkout by Arab leaders. "For them to sit with me and eat dinner - I think we've made tremendous progress."

"I told them one thing, `If you want to help the Palestinians, there's only one way. Not by declarations, not by statements, only if you have good relations with Israel,"' he told Channel 10.

Tunisia broke off formal, albeit low-level, ties with Israel after September 2000 with the outbreak of the second intifada. Some commercial relations remain.

Shalom, who was born in Tunisia but moved with his family to Israel as a child, led a delegation to the UN's World Summit on the Information Society in the Tunisian capital.

Following the Gaza pullout, Shalom met Qatar's foreign minister, who urged Arab countries to make gestures toward Israel after the withdrawal. Ahead of a UN summit in September, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon shook hands and exchanged pleasantries with Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf.

"I believe that contact with the Arab and Muslim world is possible and I will keep at it," Shalom said.

Only two Arab countries, Egypt and Jordan, have full relations with Israel, along with West African Arab-league member Mauritania.