Zionism and Judeo-Islamic Relations in the Middle East: Libya’s Position · 315PLO and Israel in fall 1993, as well as the Gaza-Jericho Agreement, signed
by the two parties in late spring 1994. In this vein, Qadhafi also totally
rejected the peace agreement signed by Israel and Jordan in May 1994,
reiterating on many occasions his long-standing argument that the Arab-
Israeli and Muslim-Jewish conflict was about existence and not an issue
of territory and rights subject to political bargaining. Furthermore, the
U.S. and Egyptian sponsorship of the political dialogue between “the
artificial Jewish state” on the one hand and the Palestinians and Jordan
on the other, further evoked Qadhafi’s outrage. Libya warned once again
that the “Jewish state” must be destroyed; otherwise, “it might realize its
Old Testament dream of establishing a Jewish state from the Nile to the
Euphrates by swallowing up Arab land and imposing its presence by the
force of weapons of mass destruction and the massive military arsenal it
possesses.”^21
This kind of statement presented Israel as the embodiment of all evil
in the region. Typical of such denunciations was the Libyan accusation
that the Israeli government had planned the attack launched by an Israeli
settler and a member of the fringe religious-nationalist Kach movement
against worshippers in the Ibrahimi Mosque at the Cave of the Makh-
pelah in Hebron on 25 February 1994, in which more than thirty Pales-
tinians were killed. A Hamas suicide attack on a civilian bus in Tel Aviv
later in the fall of that year, resulting in the deaths of over twenty Israelis,
prompted Libya to applaud the fida ̔i operation [an attack in the spirit
of Islamic self-sacrifice].^22 Embellishing on Qadhafi’s message, Libya’s
official media stated that the real danger for the Arab Muslim nation
definitely comes from the “Jewish Zionist enemy,” and therefore Israel
must be deprived of its “nuclear umbrella” as well as its “biological and
chemical weapons.” If not, the Libyan leader intimated several times,
Israel will use its weapons of mass destruction in order to “strangle” the
Arabs and the Muslims, “enslave them and take their water and oil, and
it will continue until it takes Mecca and not just al-Quds [Jerusalem].”^23
Qadhafi’s anti-Israel sentiment was further fueled by Israel’s expand-
ing ties with the Gulf states of Oman and Qatar and with the North Af-
rican states of Tunisia, Morocco, and Mauritania. In contrast to the full
diplomatic relations established with Mauritania, Israel’s diplomatic re-
lations with Tunisia and Morocco failed to reach this status. These dip-
lomatic exchanges were diametrically opposed to Qadhafi’s principle of
rejecting all political dialogue with the “illegitimate” state of Israel. While