“This is not a territorial conflict, this is a religious, a cultural conflict that the world is facing while Israel is at the front line,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel told attendees of The Jerusalem Post Diplomatic Conference on Tuesday.
In terms of diplomacy, Haskel said if anything can be learned from the last two years, it’s that nothing can be taken for granted.
“We see how our enemies are trying to ruin economic collaboration, educational collaboration, and political collaboration with our friends and turn them against us.”
However, some countries have stood by Israel from the start, Haskel said, explaining that “building that collaboration with those countries who’ve been so brave, who had such a moral clarity to push away bribes or anything else and to stand by what they truly believe in, those shared values of democracy and liberties and freedom of religion, there isn’t a bigger honor than that.”
He added, “And I think that through delegations and through [discussions with] these countries that in some way sometimes Israel took for granted, it is an opportunity to strengthen, to build more bridges and to show many countries that they will also benefit from this relationship with Israel, which is what I do in Africa as well.”
When asked by The Jerusalem Post whether she had seen examples of close friends of Israel being subjected to external pressures attempting to influence them, Haskel said, “Of course, we’ve seen that.”
“We’ve seen how foreign money, whether it is from Qatar, from Hamas, from Iran, has really influenced governments, parliament members, the media,” he added.
“So the war that we’re facing, this religious, cultural war, is not just being fought by the army, but also through media, social media, economically, diplomatically, through the international organizations, the UN – where they’ve been politicized and are being used as a political tool against Israel, against the US.”
Israel-Qatar relations
Haskel also addressed a question about the future of Israel-Qatar relations in the aftermath of Israel’s strikes on Hamas leaders in Doha last week.
“Qatar is playing a double-sided game,” she said. “As long as it hosts the perpetrators, the leadership of a terrorist organization, Hamas, who have committed the worst crimes against humanity, against the Jewish people, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, there should never be a normalization of any kind.”
“I think that the fact that [Qatar is] trying to meet the Muslim Brotherhood, which is no better than Iran, is going to create major challenges for our region, not just Israel, but the entire region, and will be more visible and it will be more extreme, I believe, in 10 years from now,” she explained.
Nevertheless, Haskel, who has recently returned from a delegation in Abu Dhabi, remains optimistic about normalization with other regional parties.
“I believe that we have partners who really want to fight radicalization, extremism – and are understanding how it stabilizes the region,” she said. “And we knew that the Abraham Accords, for us, it was always the challenge: whether in the event of a conflict or major outbreak of a war, whether the Abraham Accords would truly hold.”
Therefore, “Despite the challenges, I think that the day after the war will come, you know, those bridges will be stronger, more countries will want to join it,” Haskel said.
“I think the Arab countries, the Gulf countries, and the Middle East need to make a decision,” she concluded. “Do they want the future of their children to be dependent on the decision of a corrupt and radical Palestinian leadership?”