312 · Yehudit Ronen
foe. Perceiving this immigration in terms of its strengthening effect on
Israel and, therefore, as a direct threat to the Arabs, the Libyan head of
state referred to this issue on numerous occasions, sternly recommend-
ing to Jewish immigrants that they remain in their present countries.
Otherwise, “we propose an alternative homeland for them in the Baltic
Republics, Alaska, Alsace-Lorraine, or on the Volga River.” He further
argued that “the presence of Jews in greater numbers [in Israel] will en-
tice them to seek the realization of their historical dream of a greater state
stretching from the Euphrates to the Nile,” extending even to “Mecca and
Medina.”^14 The Jews who are already living in “Palestine,” he went on,
“have to leave Palestine immediately and return to their own countries,
including the Arab countries” and implicitly to Libya as well. “It is nec-
essary to eliminate the Jewish state from the Middle East [and] establish
[instead] a democratic Palestinian state.”^15
The Post–Cold War Era: Cracks in Qadhafi’s Wall of Hatred
toward Israel?
Despite his uncompromising rejection of Israel’s right to exist, Qadhafi
allegedly revealed an interest in establishing discreet contact with the
“Jewish state” in early 1990. Ardently desiring to end the Lockerbie mo-
rass, which he regarded as America’s political persecution of his regime,
he may have believed that by softening his hostility toward Israel, the
American administration, which he believed was strongly influenced by
the Jewish lobby in Washington, would reciprocate in kind. According to
an Israeli security official, Libya asked him, through an influential Arab
mediator, to pave the way for secret contacts between the two countries.
Nevertheless, and for whatever reason, the alleged attempt did not bear
any tangible results at that juncture.^16
Although there is no other reference to this affair, the timing of the
initiative would have been logical, shaped primarily by the alarming
collapse of the USSR, which had provided Libya with a counterweight
against the United States. This upheaval dramatically heightened Libya’s
urgency to reduce the level of hostility with the Americans. Reducing
tensions with Israel may have been perceived as a stepping-stone to a
similar reduction in hostilities with the United States. Libya was very
much in fear of an imminent U.S. air attack similar to that of 1986, which
almost killed Qadhafi.^17 This fear was further fed by a series of American