My third call for Guyana to have diplomatic relation with Israel

Mar 30, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – In my career of 33 years as a newspaper columnist, I have proposed twice that Guyana establish diplomatic relation with Israel. I repeat this suggestion against the background of the following realities.

1 – The global boycott of Israel which reached its zenith with the 1973 Arab oil embargo and the birth of the Non-Aligned Movement is now a footnote in history. No major Arab state still cling to that epoch. International relations since that era has gone through phenomenal changes which bear no resemblance to the 1970s.

2 – The replacement of General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs with the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the concretisation of globalisation and neo-liberalism have virtually devastated many poor, developing countries. The effects of globalisation on the CARICOM economies have been graphic. The sugar and banana industries were literally killed off . Trade preferences given by former colonial empires were made illegal by the WTO.

A spin off from this incredible transformation in the world economy, saw Third World (TW) states facing survival tests, looking to other countries for trade and aid outside of the traditional alliances that existed with the West before Independence.

3 – The demise of the Cold War resulted in the abandonment of American aid generosity.

The most conspicuous example of this is Grenada. Invaded by the US in 1983 to stop the spread of influence by the USSR and Cuba, the Americans saw no special relationship with Grenada after the end of the Cold War.

In a nice column done for this newspaper, Sir Ronald Sanders wrote the following: “The 14-nation CARICOM have been at the bottom of US official development assistance for decades. In 2019, for instance, total US foreign assistance globally was US$47 billion, of which collectively, 13 CARICOM countries received US$70 million only. For 9 of the 13 countries, the sum provided did not amount to US$1 million.”

What more proof TW leaders need that international affairs have changed profoundly than those statistics? At present, the UK is contemplating a reduction of foreign assistance to the TW in certain areas. What the TW has done since the fall of international communism and the consolidation of capitalism in China and Russia is to survive through redirection of their foreign policy of which China has benefitted immensely (See my article of  Sunday, July 11, 2021, “The future shape of Guyana’s foreign policy.”).

4 – The TW need to continue on the trajectory that globalisation and the end of the Cold War pushed them into. In a world where big, rich states no longer have colonial guilt, their aid generosity has declined and they demand high, and unreasonable international standards for TW products (for example the fishing industry in Guyana), the TW can no longer rely on so-called ideological friends in world affairs.

5 – Vice-President, Bharrat Jagdeo in analysing the increasing weakness of Trinidad’s mono-culture, emphasised that Guyana needs to have a diversified economy rather than rely exclusively on oil. A diversified economy can be accelerated through a diversification of foreign policy and foreign trade.

Israel is a small developed country that is an economic powerhouse. It makes no sense for a country like Guyana to continue to shun Israel. If the connection with Israel was made by a Guyanese non-Muslim president, it could have caused anger among Guyana’s large Muslim population.

We have a president who is a practicing Muslim with an excellent rapport with important Muslim organisations. He should consult with them about the prospects of having diplomatic relation with Israel. Their rejection would make no sense in terms of how the world is going. Why should Guyana continue to avoid Israel when other more developed TW states have resident Israeli embassies?

One way of approaching the issue is for President Ali to replicate the strategy of President Burnham in 1974. He wanted a Cuban diplomatic presence in Guyana and he broached the issue with his CARICOM colleagues who agreed. It wasn’t Guyana then that brought the Cubans to the Caribbean, it was a CARICOM initiative. Burnham was thus protected from American Cold War anger by using the canopy of CARICOM.

If the Guyana Government wants to build a multi-pronged economy without the pitfalls of mono-culture which Guyana suffered terribly from with sugar from the 1950s until sugar collapsed and almost took the Guyanese economy with it, then looking to other parts of the world for trade, aid and investment must be a priority.

The president has just returned from a visit to one of the Gulf nations. This is the direction of the future. He should add Israel to his list. The world is changing and so is Guyana. It is time to start the survival game by looking for friendship and trade from those who are willing to reciprocate. Israel is one such country.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

 

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