September 22, 1994 To anyone interested in a 1994 Cadillac, The Tel Aviv-Rabat Diplomatic Ties INA FRIEDMAN ISRAEL CORRESPONDENT I have less than 30 1994 Cadillacs, including many low mileage demos that must be sold or leased by Wednesday, September 28. After that, there will be no factory to dealer or lease incentives on any 1994 Cadillacs. Come in and make me an offer! These cars will be gone by Wednesday, September 28, NO MAHER WHAT THE SACRIFICE! Sincerely, 0 CADILLAC. CREATING A HIGHER STANDARD. ' Invoice may not necessarily reflect ultimate dealer cost. 7100 ORCHARD LAKE RD. at the end of Northwestern Highway WEST BLOOMFIELD 851-7200 OPEN MON. - THURS. 8 am - 9 pm • FRI. 8 am - 6 pm - you are invited to meet Joan Vass & Hal Ludacer at a trunk show joan vass usa holiday collection Joan vass, n.y. couture VASS • LUDACER jewelry informal modeling Friday, September 23 Saturday, September 24 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. light refreshments joan vass • somerset collection • near concierge desk • troy • (810) 816-9732 T iming is everything. A year ago the announce- ment that Israel and Mo- rocco had decided to open liaison offices in Rabat and Tel Aviv would have qualified as prime top-of-the-hour news. Today it is only the latest in a series of dramatic breakthroughs that have occurred since the sign- ing of the Declaration of Princi- ples between Israel and the Palestinians last Sept. 13. Right after that ceremony, Prime Min- ister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres stopped in Morocco on their way back to Israel, hoping to persuade King Hassan II to ride on the wave of euphoria that followed the Sept. 13 signing by instituting diplo- matic relations with Israel. It didn't happen, not then. What's interesting is how close it came. The groundwork, after all, had been in place for years. In- formal, and often secret, relations had existed between the two countries for almost 20 years. Both Mr. Rabin and Mr. Peres visited Morocco in their capaci- ties as prime minister: Mr. Ra- bin, secretly, in 1976; Mr. Peres, openly, 10 years later (prompt- ing Syria to sever diplomatic re- lations with Morocco). King Hassan also was instrumental in setting up the secret meeting in Morocco between then-Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan and Egyptian emissary Hassan Toua- mi, which led to President Anwar Sadat's historic visit to Israel in November 1977. Thus in a very real sense, the Moroccan monarch has been in on the Middle East peace process since the very start. Neverthe- less, it took King Hassan until last May to decide to turn the on- going contacts with Israel into diplomatic relations. Liaison of- fices, the most rudimentary of diplomatic representations, fall one step above interest sections (which are not considered diplo- matic ties) and one below con- sulates (which are official legations). The Israeli and Mo- roccan offices will be staffed by professional diplomats with diplo- matic immunity, and the two countries can decide on the mat- ters they will handle. Although they are ranked be- low the consular level, they prob- ably will be authorized to issue visas, especially as tourism is cur- rently one of the more prominent features of Israeli-Moroccan re- lations. (More than 2,000 Israeli tourists visited Morocco last year, and countless other Moroccan- born Israelis returned to visit their families, many on Moroc- can passports). King Hassan's decision to "come out of the closet," as the Israeli press characterizes the informal re- lations between Israel and various Arab and Muslim countries, was prompted by what one analyst calls the "inverted domino effect." Just as King Hussein felt pres- sured to play catch-up after Yassir Arafat concluded first the Declaration of Principles and then the Gaza-Jericho Agreement with Israel, so King Hassan felt con- strained to upgrade Morocco's re- lationship with Israel after the Israelis had promised "high pri- ority to the Jordanian historic role" in the Muslim holy shrines in Jerusalem. King Hassan, who is chairman of the Jerusalem Committee of the Islamic Conference, reportedly was furious when he learned of the Jerusalem clause of the Wash- ington Declaration. Like King Hussein and King Fahed of Sau- di Arabia, King Hassan regards himself as having a proprietary role regarding the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem. Evidently he took the Washington Declaration as a hint that he would lose ground on this sphere if he con- tinued to demur on Israel's re- quest for formal recognition. As the host of the Casablanca Economic Conference, scheduled to open Oct. 30 and include rep- resentatives from the countries participating in the multi-later- al talks, together with business leaders from all over the world, King Hassan also had an inter- est in formalizing his relations with Israel before the conclave began. Early in June, in fact, he told Mr. Peres, who was in Ra- bat) that he would approve the establishment of relations before the end of October. Morocco is the second Arab state — the only one after Egypt — to formally recognize Israel. Various other "non-confrontation states" are now expected to fol- low, especially as many have al- ready begun to develop economic ties with Israel. Beginning with Tunisia, these include Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrein from the Persian Gulf states, and Indonesia, Malaysia and Mauritania from the list of Muslim countries that have re- frained from establishing ties with Israel. In this sense, King Hassan's decision represents not only a gift for the new year but perhaps the birth of a new erain Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Muslim relations. 11