The WikiLeaks website released nearly 4,000 US diplomatic cables regarding
Israel on Wednesday that originated from the Tel Aviv embassy.
The 3,925
cables, which were all unclassified, deal with issues such as the peace process
with the Palestinian Authority and the importance of good Vatican-Jewish
relations.
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'Israel told US: Don't sell arms to certain Arab states'One cable, released in May 1990, suggested that Libya
provided
direct support for a terrorist attack carried out by the Palestinian Liberation
Front. Following the attack, the US State Department said that it would release
a white paper titled “Libyan support for terrorism threatens the Middle
East.”
The US State Department said that it was unsure of the economic
effect that the 2004
killing of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in Gaza would have. The
leaked cable did however suggest that the death of the wheelchair-bound Hamas
leader who was killed by an IAF missile as he left a mosque in the Gaza Strip
would seriously affect tourism in Israel.
Good relations between the
Vatican and the Jewish community were seen as important according to a cable
released in April 2004 that said that a commission for religious relations had
placed its dialogue with Judaism and efforts to combat anti- Semitism high on
its agenda.
According a leaked cable from June 2005, the US State
Department highlighted the importance of
understanding the religious sector in
Israel because “coalitions often give small parties, including the religious
parties, influence far exceeding their electoral weight.”
The same cable
stressed the importance of understanding the factors determining policy
positions held by the religious population and the political positions and
behavior of all the different strands within the Orthodox movement because of
the disengagement process that was looming at the time.
On a lighter
note, a cable from April 2004 highlighted the good work that
Abouelafia bakery
in Jaffa was doing in order to foster a better business environment for Israeli
Arabs as well as encouraging peaceful coexistence in the broader
arena.
The bakery owner, Hamis Abouelafia, spoke with a US economic
officer about subjects ranging from his multi-ethnic charity organization to the
annual Arab Land Day events, the cable said.
The officer discovered that
his unusual perspective “may offer some surprising solutions to the issues
Israeli-Arab businesses face in the current environment.”