MidEast

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Report: Netanyahu Held Secret Meeting With Indonesian Vice President in New York

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a secret meeting with Indonesian Vice-president Jusuf Kalla on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, The Jerusalem Post reported Sunday.

According to a report from Israeli Army Radio, Netanyahu met last week with several Muslim leaders including Egyptian President Abdel el-Sisi, among others. The meeting between Netanyahu and Kalla was reportedly kept secret at the request of Jakarta. The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office did not comment on the news.

Relations between Jerusalem and Jakarta warmed in the 1990s under the leadership of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Since then, however, contacts between the two countries have been largely secret, in the light of the pro-Palestinian public opinion in Indonesia.

In June, the leader of the world’s largest Muslim organization, Yahya Staquf, said he wants to see closer ties between Israel and Indonesia in a surprise meeting with Netanyahu in Jerusalem. The Muslim cleric from Indonesia, who is the secretary-general of the 60 million-member Nahdlatul Ulama, was visiting Israel at the invitation of the American Jewish Committee.

In an exclusive interview with The Israel Project, Staquf said he reached out to the Israeli Prime Minister “because I want peace” between Israel and the Palestinians. “If you want peace, then you have to talk to everyone.”

Staquf explained one reason why people in Muslim countries have a negative perception of Israel is because they “haven’t thought about it deeply.” Instead, Staquf urged people to “think towards peace.”

Earlier in June, Tel Aviv and Jakarta announced the lifting of restrictions on tourism between the two countries.

Despite a lack of diplomatic ties, some 36,000 Indonesian tourists visited Israel in 2017, a 60% increase compared to the previous year. That number was larger than the total arrivals of tourists from any Scandinavian country in 2017 and was about the same number of visitors from Belgium.

In addition to tourism, Israel in 2016 exported $121 million worth of goods to Indonesia, and imported goods amounting to $43 million from it.

[Photo: Kobi Gideon / GPO]