Now that the guns are stilled in the Persian Gulf, the battle of the ads has begun.
In Wednesday’s New York Times, the American Jewish Congress took out a full-page advertisement asking Arab members of the anti-Iraq coalition to “seize the moment” of the postwar period and recognize Israel; end the anti-Israel trade boycott; and help encourage Israel toward the first steps to resolving the Palestinian question.
Full-page ads from “the state of Kuwait and its people” appeared earlier this week in such publications as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Time and Newsweek magazines.
The ad thanked “America and the global family of nations” for its “swift response” in the effort to restore Kuwait’s independence.
The ad’s map of the Middle East portrayed Israel, not “Palestine,” in its present borders. It also did not have demarcations for the Gaza Strip or West Bank.
Some observers of the Middle East interpret this as a sign of Kuwaiti displeasure toward Palestinians, who sided with Iraq during the recent war.
In its ad, the AJCongress urged Arab states to “hold out the promise of full and formal normalization of relations once the Palestinian issue is resolved.
The promise of formalization of relations with its Arab neighbors will remove the major obstacle to Israel’s ability to deal with Palestinian aspirations in a forthcoming manner.”
The ad did not detail the specifics of an Israeli-Palestinian settlement.
Henry Siegman, executive director of the American Jewish Congress, said the ad was intended “to let Arab states know that support exists among segments of the American public (and) that progress in peace talks is impossible without a certain threshold being established. We know for a fact that this will be met with an appropriate Israeli response.”
Siegman said recent polls indicating that Israel’s public is evenly split — 49 to 49 percent — between retaining the administered territories and trading land for peace were “remarkable.”
“This is after Palestinians were cheering Iraqi Scud attacks from their rooftops,” he said. “Think what the Israeli response would be after a substantive initiative from the Arab side.”
The AJCongress ad also asked for contributions “to help bring this message to the Arab world.”
Asked which papers in Arab nations would even consider publishing an ad from a major American Jewish organization, Siegman said interest has come from several Egyptian newspapers and a Palestinian paper published in East Jerusalem.
He said another route to getting the ad to Arab readers would be through a newspaper such as the English-language International Herald Tribune, which is distributed in the Arab world.
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