Zionism and Judeo-Islamic Relations in the Middle East: Libya’s Position · 323Washington. Signaling a softer approach toward Israel seemed to be an
effective stratagem for promoting Libya’s own vital interests.
By allowing his son to be the one to articulate changes in Libya’s
rhetoric toward Zionism, the state of Israel, and the Arab-Israeli conflict,
Qadhafi was able to remain ideologically and politically aloof from this
process. This, in turn, enabled him to maintain his agenda and prestige.
Significantly as well, the change in the rhetoric toward Israel also pro-
vided Qadhafi with a pressure valve for expressing his outrage toward
the Arab Muslim world for its “betrayal” when Libya was suffering from
the Lockerbie sanctions. In the early 2000s, it became increasingly appar-
ent that Tripoli’s regional and international priorities were changing in
an unprecedented manner. This also coincided with some generational
changes in the country’s leadership, as figures well versed in the culture
and mind-set of the West were placed in positions of official responsibil-
ity. Still under his father’s dominant leadership but enjoying a measure
of tangible impact of his own, Saif al-Islam clearly affected the shaping
of Libya’s decision-making machinery throughout the 2000s. While Qad-
hafi matured ideologically during the stormy anti-Israel, Pan-Arab Nas-
serite era, his son has ascended to a politically influential position in an
era that sanctified the principle of the territorial state and its own explicit
interests as a first priority.
Notwithstanding the dramatic upheavals Libya has witnessed during
his long tenure in power, Qadhafi remained captive to his hostile senti-
ments toward Israel and found it difficult to relinquish them. Indeed,
after resuming diplomatic relations with Washington in 2005, there was
no longer any incentive for him to relax his lifelong negative opinions of
Israel. From 2005 through 2010, Libya had carved for itself an important
niche on the U.S. foreign policy agenda and on the global political and
economic map. Having renounced international terrorism and weapons
of mass destruction, the Libyans no longer needed to placate the West.
Therefore, one did not find in recent years significant statements by either
Saif al-Islam or other top Libyan officials which advocated even a rela-
tively conciliatory approach toward the legitimacy of the state of Israel
or in favor of a political solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The nation-
wide bloody rebellion that erupted against Qadhafi in winter 2011 may
or may not lead to a change in regime and thus it is premature to specu-
late whether or not political changes would necessarily work to Israel’s
advantage.