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ONE ON ONE
A Middle East Newsline Special September 2001 |
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Welcome to Middle East Newsline's One on One. We will provide excerpts of
interviews and hearings that concern major developments in the Middle East.
To make it easier for our readers, we have edited the text so you can
quickly read the main points of either the interview or testimony that we
present.
CROATIAN TIES FALL SHORT OF ISRAELI ARMS SALES
DUBROVNIK, Croatia [MENL] -- Six years ago, Ivana Burledez held her first
conference on Jewish life in the Adriatic in this port city.
Ms. Burledez invited some of the best scholars from Israel, Europe and
the United States to discuss such esoteric topics as Jewish life along the
Adriatic coast in the 17th Century. The Croatian government, determined to
improve relations with Jews and establish diplomatic ties with Israel,
gladly financed the effort.
Today, Ms. Burledez continues to convene her biannual seminar, held last
month. But five years after Israel established relations with Croatia, she
no longer has support from a left-wing government in Zagreb and has had to
rely on her family for help to feed and host the guests.
"It seems that the government no longer has interests in this issue," Ms.
Burledez, a longtime political activist and who is not Jewish, said. "I
question whether the government has any interests in minorities at all."
But government financing for Ms. Burledez's research of Jewish life or
her work with Holocaust survivors does not seem to reflect Croatia's
relations with Israel. The Central European country attracts thousands of
Israeli tourists and the Israeli presence in Dubrovnik is significant.
The one sphere in bilateral relations that has not achieved significant
gains is defense. When the late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman wooed
Israel in the mid-1990s he suggested that Zagreb would ensure that Israel
would be a leading supplier of weapons and military platforms. Tudjman
stressed that the two countries were similar and Croatia's defense and
military doctrine would use Israel as a model.
Tudjman's appeal won him supporters in Israel's Defense Ministry. But
Croatia never signed one major weapons deal with Israel. In the end,
officials and defense sources in both countries said, Zagreb never came up
with the money required to purchase weapons or upgrades.
"They simply don't have money and they don't feel an imminent threat," an
Israeli official who monitors Croatia said. "We'll see how the tourist
season shapes up and whether things will change."
The closest Croatia came to a weapons deal was in 1998 when Zagreb termed
Israel as the frontrunner in a project to upgrade the Central European
country's MiG-21 fighter-jet fleet. That project was regarded as one of
several upgrades Zagreb would consider. The two countries were also
discussing an Israeli modernization of Croatia's Soviet-origin T-55 tank
fleet.
But Tudjman's death in 1998 followed by the victory of a left-wing
pro-European Union government dashed such plans. President Stepa Mesic is
regarded as a supporter of Israel, but has not seen a need to stress defense
links. Instead, Mesic has connected Croatia's defense doctrine to that of
the EU and NATO, both organizations which Mesic hopes his country will
eventually join.
"Relations with the Jews and Israel have increased after the
establishment of ties with Israel in 1997," Croatia's ambassador to Israel,
Svjetlan Berkovic said.
Israeli officials agreed. They said although Zagreb did not fulfill the
hopes for weapons deals with Israel, the two countries cooperate in defense
issues. These include an intelligence exchange that has helped Israel
understand Islamic fundamentalism and Iranian influence in the former
Yugoslavia and Central Europe. The information and cooperation have been
valuable for Israel's fight against Islamic insurgency.
Indeed, earlier this year Zagreb quashed a deal for the sale of naval
vessels to Iran. Diplomats believe Croatia's close security relations with
both Israel and the United States was the reason the Mesic government
blocked what could have been a lucrative contract.
But Croatia has not been the only country in Central Europe to have
disappointed Israeli hopes for arms sales. Israeli efforts with Slovakia
have not resulted in any arms deals or cooperation. Slovenia, which signed
several deals in the mid-1990s, has frozen some of the defense contracts as
a result of a dispute regarding offsets.
Slovenia appears to have ended its brisk weapons relationship with
Israel. Since 1995, Slovenia purchased hundreds of millions of dollars in
defense systems, weapons and upgrades. This included the Israeli upgrade of
the Soviet-era T-55 tank.
But last month Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres was greeted cooly
in Lublijana. He was portrayed in a front-page newspaper cartoon as taking
out of his suitcase tanks and airplanes during his meeting with Slovenian
leaders.
"There is nothing more for us to look for in Slovenia," an Israeli
defense industry source said. "The government has been in a dispute with us
for a while over the issue of offsets and the Defense Ministry is not buying
anymore."
Slovakia had also represented a lucrative Israeli opportunity. The
Central European republic, which separated from Czech in 1994, had proposed
the prospect of joint defense production projects with Israel. Slovakia
would provide cheap labor, expertise in land platforms and markets while Israel
would supply technology and financing.
Four years ago, then-Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh returned from
Bratislava with such hopes. But amid the economic crisis in Israel and
shifting political alliances in Slovakia, little was achieved.
In contrast, Yugoslavia is said to have purchased weapons from Israel.
Belgrade has signed deals for tactical communications systems for its ground
forces.
"The main problem with these countries is lack of money," the Israeli
official said. "They want to delay any decisions on weapons until they're
sure that is what's required of them. I expect that when Croatia is ready to
join NATO then that country will take a hard look at what they really need
and whether we can supply it."
As a result, Croatia and some of the surrounding states have lost their
luster in Jerusalem. Israel's Foreign Ministry has decided to employ one
ambassador, David Granit, to cover Croatia, Slovakia and Slovenia. Granit is
based in Jerusalem.
For Ms. Burledez, the absence of Croatian and Israeli support for her
Jewish research has meant that she has had to seek private donors. She
helped organize a local high school to document the memories of Jewish
Holocaust survivors during World War II. Those memories are sensitive in
devoutly-Catholic Croatia, which received a short-lived independence under
Hitler and became the only foreign country where locals operated a Nazi
death camp, Jasenovac.
"I wrote of the Jews in Dubrovnik," Aida Karamehmedovic, one of the
students, said. "There was a mass genocide [during World War II] and the
only ones who were able to survive were those who fled with the help of the
Italians."
The project focused on the life of Sarah Renata, sent to Auschwitz as a
child. She is now 75 and her grandson is a religious Jew. She spent her
afternoons with high school students in Dubrovnik, a port city where Jews
lived for hundreds of years but now contains no more than 50 elderly Jews.
"They listened to me with rapt attention," Mrs. Renata said. "I told
them of how we arrived to Auschwitz. There were seven gas ovens when we got
there. When we got there we didn't know what was going on and they told us
this was a bakery. We believed it. We didn't even have water. We drank water
from the toilets and ate bones left for dogs. I lost 30 members of my
family."
The government provided about $520 for the entire project, which
included a field study trip to Israel. Ms. Burledez did not obtain any
funding from Jewish groups abroad.
The story of Zagreb's support for Ms. Burledez's conference appears to
reflect Croatia's developing relations with Israel. The 1996 and 1998
conferences were entired financed by the government, including the Science
Ministry and later the Culture Ministry.
In 2000, the Croatian Science Ministry ended support for the conference.
The Cultural Ministry provided $4,000.
Last month, the Science Ministry ignored Ms. Burledez's request for
funding. The Culture Ministry and the Tourism Ministry also turned her down.
This time, however, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
paid for the flights of several speakers during the conference. The group
was supposed to have sent a senior representative, but he did not arrive.
"The fact is that there is an evident drop in government support but the
reasons are unknown to me," Ms. Burledez said. "I wouldn't like to think
that I personally caused this situation as I do not belong to any government
coalition party."
For its part, Israel has not rushed to fund an improvement in relations
with Croatia. A proposal by Croatia's universities for joint research and
exchange programs with their Israeli counterparts fizzled out when the price
tag for the Israeli side was regarded as too high. The Croatian side pleaded
poverty and said it could not fund the exchange.
For her part, Ms. Burledez credits Israeli and Croatian diplomats,
particularly, Berkovic, for the steady improvement in relations. But she
hopes that even in times of need the relations will continue to expand.
"I dare say that Croatian-Israeli relations are good." she said. "Yet,
it is in human nature to wish for the better or the best and I know that
there will be many opportunities to do so, especially in the economic and
tourist field. I expect that cultural and scientific projects and events
will not be politicized in Croatian's near future."
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