According to Zvi Mazel, the outgoing Israeli ambassador to Cairo, his country and Egypt have lost much by failing to set up economic joint ventures, amid rising anti-Israeli sentiments in the heart of the Arab World.
In an interview with the Associated Press shortly before his departure this week for a new post at the foreign ministry in Jerusalem, Mazel said he was disappointed that he had failed to persuade Egyptians to open up to Israeli investment.
"There was a possibility of working together, creating dozens of Israeli-Egyptian joint ventures, employing dozens of thousands of people," Mazel said.
Israel has the technology, he said, while Egypt has large numbers of technical graduates - and an unemployment rate unofficially estimated near 20 percent.
When Mazel arrived in Cairo in December 1996, he lobbied cabinet ministers to promote joint ventures but ran into a wall of stalling, he told the agency.
"There was something not very clear in their policy," Mazel said.
On one hand, he claimed, Egypt is proud of its 1979 peace treaty with Israel and needs investment.
On the other hand, "their media attacks on Israel produced an atmosphere that was not conducive to cooperation," he said.
As Mazel got to know Egyptians better, some said they were afraid of domination by Israel, where gross domestic product was 13 percent higher and per capita income 12 times greater than in Egypt in 1999.
Mazel dismissed this concern, saying, "Egypt is a big country of 65 million people with many problems. Who wants to dominate it?"
Egyptians, he said, overlook the fact that in today's world of globalization, investors are private stockholders, not governments, and come from many countries.
Egyptian professional unions and the media have played the greater part in rendering normalization with Israel a failure by relentless campaigns and punishments inflicted on members and public figures who have gone in that direction, he added - Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
