316 · Yehudit Ronen
finding it politically inexpedient at the height of the Lockerbie sanctions
nightmare to confront the “treacherous” core Arab states, Mauritania,
a country on the fringes of the Arab world, became an easy target for
Qadhafi’s retaliation and an outlet for his frustration over Arab states’
links with Israel. Therefore, Qadhafi withdrew Libya’s recognition of
Mauritania “as an Arab country,” recalling the Libyan ambassador from
Nouakchott in late 1995 in strong protest at its establishment of official
diplomatic relations with the “Israeli enemy.”^24
While focusing major attention during the second half of the 1990s on
combating the perilous Islamist threat to his regime’s survival^25 and on
coping with the nadir of Libya’s domestic and foreign circumstances as
a result of the UN sanctions and the sharp price decline in the global oil
market and, hence, in Libya’s oil revenues, Qadhafi lessened his preoc-
cupation with the annihilation of the “Jewish state.” It was, however, the
second Palestinian intifada, which broke out in fall 2000, that refocused
his attention on the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict and on “detested Zi-
onism.” Portraying the “Jewish state” in early 2001 as a reckless and im-
perialist aggressor and as the source of all evil, he warned the Arab Mus-
lim world of what he claimed were Israel’s ambitions to conquer “Syria,
Lebanon and even Iraq... and even Judaize North Africa” (emphasis
added). By accentuating the religious aspect of the conflict, Qadhafi drew
attention to the Judeo-Islamic facets of the dispute, thus broadening its
scope to include not only Arabs but also Muslims all over the world.
Further referring to what he argued was a conspiracy between Israel
and the United States to extend Israeli control over the Middle East, he
stated that “the U.S. would help [the Israelis] to occupy the Gulf. In the
end, [Washington] would prefer that the oil be in the hands of the Israelis
rather than of the Arabs because the latter are moody and unpredict-
able.... Therefore, the Israeli borders might be extended from Iran to the
Atlantic and to the Turkish borders.” Detailing further his apocalyptic
vision, Qadhafi warned that since “the Israelis claim that Mecca was built
by Abraham,” they think that “Mecca is theirs and Medina is also theirs.
They like to make inane biblical claims such as this.”^26
The “Isratin” State Formula: Same Old Antagonism in a New Format?
In the aftermath of the Lockerbie trial in the Netherlands in early 2001, in
which one of the two Libyan nationals suspected of responsibility for the