The twenty-fourth of September 2021 was not normal for the Iraqi Jew, Joseph Braudi, the activist with American citizenship, who admitted that he discussed with the American army job opportunities in Iraq in 2003, and did not deny his work to smuggle ancient cylinder seals that were looted from The Iraqi Museum, that day, achieved a great achievement on the land of the Kurdistan region of Iraq.
The founder and head of the Peace Communications Center, who spent decades promoting Arab-Israeli normalization, was able to mobilize more than 300 Iraqis to participate in a conference held in Erbil, during which participants expressed their hopes for the normalization of Iraq's relations with Israel.
Braudy did not care much about the possibility of arrest warrants for the participants or threats to kill them by armed groups, or even the loss of their jobs. Iraq asked for our help."
In any case, the conference recorded a rare and unprecedented public stance in Iraq, after the signing of four normalization agreements between the Arabs and Israel last year, in addition to the previously existing “peace agreements” with Egypt and Jordan, and the living of nearly half of the population of the Arab world in a country that has diplomatic relations Open with Israel, Braudi and the Israelis realize that the biggest geopolitical prize in the normalization journey will be Baghdad, a land with a nationalist and pan-Arab anti-Israel past, and a present mined by Iranian influence hostile to Tel Aviv as well.
Erbil Conference.. "A Shot in the Dark"
At the Erbil conference, Braudi, the grandson of a senior Iraqi rabbi, stood looking beyond the conference arrangements and its ostentatious details, the sight of dozens of Iraqis dressed in traditional dress at the tables of a luxury hotel. Specifically, Brawdy was looking at the impact that a group of Iraqi clerics, university professors and young people would have, who spoke for the first time in a clear voice about their aspirations for a new Iraq in which everyone lives in peace with its "neighbors", even though their Iraq still criminalizes "promoting Zionist principles" with a punishment that has been imposed on them. up to the death penalty.
What Braudi called "exploratory diplomacy" first borne fruit in this qualitative conference after the aforementioned representative of the Peace Communications Center facilitated an awareness campaign in Iraq that focused on promoting the existence of two different tracks for the region, the first of which is the path of the "Ibrahim Agreements", which opens the door to living Peace and security in the region, and the second is the rejection of normalization, which means the continuation of conflict and instability, as is the case in countries such as Lebanon and Syria.
Wissam Al-Hardan
We can look at the example of Sheikh "Wissam Al-Hardan", who is now under protection in Kurdistan after threats reached the participants in the conference.
Al-Hardan was one of the main participants in the normalization activity, and he contributed with his counterparts to mobilizing citizens to participate in seven governorates, namely Baghdad, Nineveh, Babil, Salah al-Din, Diyala, and Anbar, and persuading them to join the first track promoted by Braudi.
Al-Hardan was not satisfied with publishing an article in the Wall Street Journal on the morning of the conference calling for normalization with Israel and praising the UAE for doing so. ', in an implicit reference to Iranian-backed and anti-Israel groups. After him, "Sahar Al-Taie", the senior researcher at the Iraqi Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Antiquities, addressed the participants, saying: "It is necessary and inevitable, for the sake of regional peace, to recognize Israel as a friendly country... (We) want peace with Israel."
In sum, what came out of the quiver of the participants in the Erbil conference represents a great achievement for the pressure groups and research institutions that support Israel in the United States, in addition to being an achievement for Israel itself, which has not dreamed of a similar conference for years. They believed that the time was right to present "peace with Israel" as an alternative to Iranian hegemony over Iraq, especially in conjunction with Baghdad's attempts to free itself from Iranian influence and restore its relations with the Arab countries. The conference organizers took advantage of the confusion between the presence of an Iraqi public that supports the restoration of Iraqi Jews' rights, and a smaller and more controversial public that wants normalization with Israel.
The Erbil conference revealed many hopes in the Israelis regarding Iraq and extracting the precious normalization from it. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett tweeted immediately after the conference, saying that “hundreds of Iraqi public figures, Sunnis and Shiites, gathered yesterday to call for peace with Israel.. this An invitation that comes from below, not from above, from the people, not the government... Recognizing the historical injustice suffered by the Jews of Iraq is particularly important... The State of Israel extends its hand in peace." Foreign Minister Yair Lapid also stated after the conference that "the event in Iraq is a source of hope and optimism, as Israel is always looking for ways to expand the circle of peace."
מאות אנשי ציבור עיראקים, סונים ושיעים, התכנסו אתמול כדי לקרוא לשלום עם ישראל.
זוהי קריאה שבאה מלמטה ולא מלמעלה, מהעם ולא מהמשלה, וחשובה במיוחד ההכרה בעוטול ההיסורי שנעשוה ליק
מדינת ישראל מושיטה לכם את ידה לשלום בחזרה.
pic.twitter.com/VtfimygLr5
— Naftali Bennett בנט (@naftalibennett) September 25, 2021
Under the Radar.. Relations between Israel and the Iraqis
Since Israel declared its state in 1948, Iraq has been quick to break with it, while Iraqi Jews have been pressured by their government to give up their citizenship and leave the country.
The Israelis have not forgotten what Iraq has done throughout its history. It sent its forces to fight the occupying state in 1948 and 1967. In early 1991 (the Gulf War), Saddam Hussein's regime launched 43 "Scud" missiles at several areas in Israel, the most important of which is Tel Aviv.
However, the relationship with the Kurdistan region in particular has long attracted the Israelis, believing that the Kurds, as not being Arabs, could meet with them on a common interest. But this was only achieved through a small group of Kurdish Jews who immigrated from Iraq to the occupied lands, and repeatedly tried to contact their original homeland, to form an important link over the past years, but the matter never exceeded the limit of direct personal and family contact throughout Saddam Hussein’s stay in The authority, despite the Israelis' (unrequited) support for the Kurdish cause, hoping to get something in return one day.
After the American invasion of Iraq, the Israeli courtship began to bear fruit. At a time when the major Arab-Israeli wars are over, and the road to Washington passes through Tel Aviv, and the occupying power itself has become a pivotal military and intelligence pole in the region, the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq - which is self-governing - has undertaken limited cooperation in order to acquire these advantages. For example, in 2015 Israel announced the import of 19 million barrels of oil annually from the region, despite the well-known disputes between Iraqi Kurdistan and Baghdad regarding the single export of Kurdish oil. Moreover, the Israeli Prime Minister at the time, “Netanyahu,” announced support for the region in its attempt to secede through the referendum in 2017. Although Kurdistan, in return, benefited from some oil revenues and some Israeli military expertise in training the Peshmerga, it did not exchange Tel Aviv open cordiality, and remained committed to the lines Arab and Iraqi red in this regard.
In May 2018, the occupying power established a Facebook page called “Israel in the Iraqi dialect,” with the aim of “creating communication and fruitful dialogue between the Israeli and Iraqi peoples and showing the true face of Israel.”
But Israel never stopped trying.
In May 2018, the occupying power established a Facebook page called "Israel in the Iraqi dialect", with the aim of "creating communication and fruitful dialogue between the Israeli and Iraqi peoples and showing the true face of Israel."
In 2019, Israel also removed Iraq from the list of "enemy countries", which includes Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Iran, and signed a decree authorizing trade exchange with Baghdad.
Then, Israeli efforts toward rapprochement with Iraq began to bear fruit in January 2019, when it was revealed secret visits by three Iraqi delegations to Tel Aviv, consisting of 15 political and religious figures, who met with Israeli government officials and academics, and visited the memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. Matters reached an unprecedented level with statements by the Iraqi ambassador to Washington, “Farid Yassin,” during a symposium held at the Al-Hiwar Center for Arab Culture and Dialogue, in which he said that “there are objective reasons that may call for establishing relations between Iraq and Israel.” This confronted Yassin. A violent reaction from his fellow Iraqi officials.
On the other hand, Mithal Al-Alusi, the leader of the Iraqi secular Umma Party, emerged as one of the most important advocates of normalization with Israel.
Al-Alusi was in the first round of Iraqi normalization visits with the occupying country. The former deputy in the Iraqi parliament said after the signing of the UAE’s normalization agreement with Israel that “Iraq needs to get out of the camp of wars and extremism, and get rid of Iranian hegemony and its manipulation of Shiite religious parties, and that this will hurt It is in the interest of Iraq and establishes security stability, and develops political cooperation between Iraq and most countries of the world in the event of normalization with Israel.”
Mithal Al-Alusi, the leader of the Iraqi secular Umma Party, emerged as one of the most important advocates of normalization with Israel.
Washington blesses the normalization of Iraq
“The United States will work to support and expand the Ibrahim Accords,” said Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on the same day as the Erbil conference in Iraq. Of course, Washington sees expanding the area of regional recognition of Israel in order to achieve important and ancient strategic goals, the most important of which is the formation of a regional alliance that helps isolate Iran.
Those seeking normalization between Iraq and Israel depend on Baghdad’s need for investments and funds to compensate for the sharp decline in oil revenues and boost investments in a country that has been economically exhausted for years. The Iraqi people are below the poverty line. All of these reasons prompted the Iraqi youth in October 2019 to go out and denounce the miserable state of the economy and rampant corruption, developments that tempt some to believe that normalization with Israel will bring economic benefits from Israel, Washington and the Gulf, and help reduce the Iranian role on the other hand, and the latter is a goal key on the agenda of the current Iraqi government.
Despite this, Iyad al-Dulaimi, an Iraqi writer and political analyst, believes that Iraq is not ready to take the step of normalization with Israel, and this is due to the country's need for a clear and stable political system independent of regional influence (especially Iranian), where he says: "The country It needs a political system capable of taking such a step. Today in Iraq there are several forces controlling its political and sovereign decision, and these forces are intersecting, discordant, and sometimes even combative, and not all of them will agree on a step like normalization.. From here, the normalization step does not seem logical or close, Even the bastard conference that was held in Erbil, everyone disavowed it, and in my estimation, it was a test of the pulse of the Iraqi street and the forces controlling it, and they announced that they were against normalization.”
According to al-Dulaimi, the only advantages of the Erbil conference are the overwhelming Iraqi popular rejection of such a step, despite all the misery, misery and deterioration of the Iraqi citizen’s overall living conditions, and despite all that has been said and said that normalization with the occupying state may contribute to The reality of the Iraqi citizen has improved, and despite the tiredness of many of the Iranian interventions in a way that may have depicted to some that the courtship of Israel may be accepted reluctantly in order to get away from Tehran.
However, that did not happen, and the uproar that followed the Erbil conference proved that Iraq’s national constants will not be easily touched, from the side of the Sunnis or the Shiites alike, and that cooperation between Iraqi Kurdistan and Israel is constrained by Erbil’s own desire for limited benefit, especially since it actually achieves greater benefit from Its relations with regional parties such as Iran, Turkey, the Gulf and Europe, and then open Kurdish-Israeli normalization becomes a burden and a meaningless noise.
In the end, normalization is still a political and social taboo in Iraq, even though there is a desire for it among limited sectors of the people of the post-2003 regime. On the other hand, everyone now realizes that redefining relations with major regional and international powers for Baghdad and Erbil alike is The real key to inaugurating a stable and prosperous political and economic system is not courting Israel.