- David Pollock, Kaufman Fellow
By David Pollock: A recent spate of reports in major Arab media about official and other contacts with Israelis — including very widely publicized Saudi and Egyptian visits to Israel in the past month — is generating renewed regional debate over the pros and cons of this phenomenon. Much of this debate, however, obscures one key point: Arab contacts with Israel, far from being brand new, actually have a very long history, with many ups and downs along the way.
In fact, official Arab-Israeli meetings and signed agreements date almost all the way back to Israel’s creation, with the Rhodes Armistice accords of 1949. For nearly two decades thereafter, there were periodic if generally low-level official meetings about security incidents, water, refugees, and other issues — along with many private, higher-level meetings. The 1967 war produced the famous “three no’s” of the Arab summit conference in Khartoum: no peace, no recognition, and no negotiations with Israel. But just a few years later, after the 1973 war, contacts resumed, culminating in the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of 1979. Ever since, through all the turbulent decades until today, Egypt and Israel have maintained diplomatic, security, and economic relations.