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January 21, 2005
New envoy has hope for peace
Ambassador Alan Baker says that the PA's Abu Mazen is a pragmatist.
PAT JOHNSON
Israel's new ambassador to Canada made a splash in Vancouver last
week, sparring with critics and urging Canada to take a greater
role in Middle East peacemaking.
Alan Baker, who was appointed to the top Israeli diplomatic post
in Canada last September, saturated local media during his visit,
as well as speaking at numerous public and private events in Vancouver
and Victoria. In an interview with the Bulletin, the ambassador
said he hopes this country will play a larger role in the emerging
peace opportunity between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
"Canada can take a far greater role," said Baker, arguing
that Canada is a model for diversity, good governance and the rule
of law. Canada could be helpful, he said, by aiding the Palestinian
Authority with the reestablishment of municipal institutions and
by urging Israel's neighbors – Syria, Lebanon and Iran, primarily
– to support and fund Palestinian development instead of continued
violence.
Baker was a lead Israeli negotiator with the Palestinians during
the Oslo peace process and knows the new Palestinian President Mahmoud
Abbas well. Having been party to the process, Baker acknowledged
he might be expected to harbor suspicions about Palestinian sincerity
in future negotiations, but said any chance for lasting peace is
worth the risk.
"Like every average Israeli, the hope and the will [is] that
maybe we will be able to get to some peaceful arrangement so that
the kids won't have to go and be put in difficult situations in
the army, that we'll be able to live normally in a normal country,"
he said. "This overcomes everything else. So there is an element
of naiveté, but I think now there's a reasonable chance that
perhaps – perhaps – with Arafat gone, we are able to move
forward. It will take time.... But if the Palestinians are really,
seriously putting their house in order and they get support from
the international community, including from Canada, and they feel
sufficiently capable and confident in doing it, then I think there's
every good reason to believe that we're in for a positive period."
Of Abbas personally, Baker expressed hope. Baker has practised international
law for two decades and, during the Oslo process, he dealt personally
with Abbas, who was a lead Palestinian negotiator.
"He's a pragmatic person," said the ambassador. "He's
not an overly emotional person. He's not the symbol that Arafat
was. He's not a dramatic person. He's a dry-ish technocrat who can
get the job done if he manages to get the public support."
Abbas's comments during the election campaign, when he resorted
to traditional rhetoric against "the Zionist enemy," were
worrying, Baker admitted.
"It raises an element of alarm," he said. "But the
Palestinians are committed in black and white to ending incitement
and trying to push forward mutual good neighborly relations. It's
written in the agreements that we have with them that are still
valid. Abu Mazen [Abbas] signed on to these agreements [as a negotiator].
He's aware of them. He knows of them and he knows this is one of
the first obligations – it's written in the road map that the
Palestinians have accepted, as have the Israelis – that first
and foremost they have to stop this incitement. He's fully aware
of what's incumbent upon him. The question is whether he's going
to be capable of doing it. These statements that he made during
his election campaigning were unfortunate because they'll lead to
the impression that people are going to expect him to continue in
this manner."
Since arriving in Ottawa four months ago, the new envoy said he
has met with Prime Minister Paul Martin, Foreign Affairs Minister
Pierre Pettigrew, members of Parliament and senior bureaucrats.
He said he has perceived "a sincere wish to improve bilateral
relations with Israel."
Protesters greeted the ambassador's presence at the Jewish Community
Centre of Greater Vancouver (JCC) for the 15th Townhall Meeting.
The meetings were originally organized by the Israel Action Committee,
an ad hoc local Zionist group. That role has been taken over by
the Pacific Region of the Canada-Israel Committee, a new branch
of the national Zionist lobbying group. Dr. Michael Elterman, the
group's B.C. representative, told the meeting that the changed organizational
structure was a response to requests for further resources at the
local level.
Of the protesters, Baker said he was prepared to address any questions
raised, which he also did witheringly during an earlier meeting
at the University of British Columbia. When an audience member at
an afternoon gathering of law students compared Israeli policies
to apartheid, Baker said the woman proved she understood neither
the history of apartheid nor the history of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.
Baker's predecessor as ambassador was prevented by an anti-Israel
mob from speaking at Simon Fraser University last year. That won't
prevent Baker from speaking on as many campuses as will have him,
he said.
"The fact that [the former ambassador] was perhaps prevented
from letting his opinions [be] known in this or that university
doesn't mean that I shouldn't try," said Baker. "I would
expect that in Canada, this Canadian nature of being prepared to
listen to every opinion, would also be applicable in university."
Baker said the new coalition government in Israel will ensure that
the majority public support for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement
plan will translate into Knesset support.
He said Israel is fighting an asymmetrical battle with the Palestinian
terror groups, which are not bound by the international conventions
imposed on states. The terrorists use methods that deliberately
provoke Israel to behave in ways that elicit international condemnation,
he said, citing the terrorists' use of ambulances as weapons transports,
which forces Israel to delay emergency vehicles, resulting in assertions
that Israel is insensitive to Palestinian suffering, he said. Taking
over the Church of the Nativity – where tradition says Jesus
was born – was another effort to provoke Israel into invading
the church, in contravention of international conventions, he said.
Even so, Baker said, he is optimistic that Palestinians are realizing
that they need to accept Israel's existence and move ahead with
their own plans.
"I personally believe they are committed to coming to some
modus vivendi with Israel," he said.
The approximately two dozen protesters outside the JCC were there
ostensibly because Baker was one of the authors of Israel's public
response to the Hague case. Derrick O'Keefe, a Vancouver activist,
said the protest was called for by the Palestine Community Centre
and supported by groups like his, Stopwar.ca.
"The message is quite simple," said O'Keefe. "We
know that Mr. Baker was involved with the legal case before the
International Court of Justice [and] we want to make very clear
that we want Canada to implement that decision, which urges all
governments to encourage Israel to dismantle the barrier being built
in the West Bank."
The ambassador faced some hostile questions from audience members,
one of whom expressed the view that Jews have a biblically proscribed
right to live in Judea and Samaria, which is the traditional name
for the West Bank, and another who expressed an anti-Muslim screed,
which the ambassador criticized as counter to the atmosphere needed
for peace.
Pat Johnson is a B.C. journalist and commentator.
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