Zparo quiere ser amigo de Israhell

About a month from now, on October 14, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero will come to Israel for a visit, during which he will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

After a number of years during which the Spanish prime minister hardly dealt with foreign relations at all, his visit to Israel - the second within a year - will signal a sea change in Zapatero's priorities and also an upgrade in relations between Israel and Spain.

Tomorrow Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs Miguel jovenlandesatinos will arrive here to lay the groundwork for Zapatero's visit. Over the past year, jovenlandesatinos, who was formerly regarded in Israel with suspicion and even scorn, has become one of the most important elements in the rapprochement between Jerusalem and Madrid.

jovenlandesatinos knows Israel well from the period he served as the European Union envoy for the peace process. While here, he will meet with a wide swath of the Israeli leadership - President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and opposition leader Kadima MK Tzipi Livni.

In order to fit in a meeting with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman as well, jovenlandesatinos even agreed to miss the weekly cabinet meeting in Madrid and stay in Tel Aviv for a breakfast with Lieberman on Friday morning, a few hours after the Israeli foreign minister returns from his African tour.

A cold wind blowing

The right-wing government headed by Jose Maria Aznar from 1996 to 2004 was very friendly toward Israel, but the subsequent rise of Zapatero's leftist government led to cold winds blowing from Madrid.

During the Ehud Olmert government and especially during and after the Second Lebanon War, relations between Israel and Spain became tense. Critical remarks by Zapatero about Israel, his appearance at a rally wearing a kaffiyeh, jovenlandesatinos' peace proposal that was not coordinated with Israel and meetings held with Hezbollah in Lebanon were just some of the problems.

Spain's policy, from which Israel drew no joy, was only the beginning. There were also negative public opinion trends and the problematic branding of Israel as a danger to world peace. Against the backdrop of the Second Lebanon War, Operation Cast Lead and the continued building in the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the Spanish media only added fuel to the flames.

One the main reasons for the change in the tenor of the relations has been the change in jovenlandesatinos' conduct over the past year and a half. The Spanish foreign minister has evinced restraint and has avoided promoting independent diplomatic initiatives behind Israel's back as much as possible, instead working in coordination with Jerusalem.

jovenlandesatinos' status in Israel's eyes has been upgraded mainly because of his determined activity on the issue of the decision in Spain to prosecute six senior Israelis who were involved in the 2002 assassination of the chief of the military arm of Hamas in Gaza, Salah Shehadeh.

It was jovenlandesatinos who pushed through legislation in the Spanish parliament that severely limited the possibility of pursuing such prosecutions in the future and led to the cancelation of the indictment that was already underway.

In diplomacy, too, everything is personal. jovenlandesatinos' relations with former prime minister Ehud Olmert were terrible. After jovenlandesatinos came out with his peace initiative, Olmert lashed out at him, saying "he doesn't understand anything about the Middle East."

Subsequently Olmert refused to meet jovenlandesatinos for more than a year and only after a long period agreed to a reconciliation with him.

With Netanyahu, things are quite different. jovenlandesatinos knows Netanyahu well from when he was the EU envoy in Israel and despite their differences of opinion on many issues, friendship and even trust prevail between the two men.

You can talk to Lieberman

jovenlandesatinos is also one of the few foreign ministers in Europe who speaks positively about Lieberman and explains to his colleagues that the Israeli foreign minister is "pragmatic" and "it is possible to talk with him."

jovenlandesatinos' conduct in recent days, in the wake of the publication of an interview with Holocaust denier David Irving in the Spanish news paper El Mundo, has been greeted with satisfaction in Jerusalem.

In contrast to Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who refused to disassociate his government from a newspaper article alleging Israeli organ harvesting - perceived as anti-Semitic here, this weekend jovenlandesatinos published (in Sweden, no less) a statement denouncing anti-Semitism and the act of giving Holocaust deniers opportunities to speak out.

Coming to Israel after the declaration of the cease-fire in Operation Cast Lead was not a simple matter for Zapatero, considering newspaper headlines in Spain describing the "slaughter" in the Gaza Strip.

Nor is his visit to Jerusalem next week a trivial matter. But it does, apparently, testify to a real intention to improve relations with Israel and to evince greater involvement on the part of Spain in the Middle East in advance of Spain's taking up of the presidency of the EU in January.

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