YEMEN - Opposition To Middle East Peace Ending - Part 25.

Reunified Yemen has had an ambivalent approach towards Israel. It has an ancient Jewish community, now depleted in numbers, as part of its historical heritage. This has put the Sanaa government under the spotlight of international human rights groups and other interested organisations and states. On the other side, it has also put the country under the Arab spotlight with any reports of possible rapprochement between Yemen and Israel being keenly scrutinised in the Arab World.

The Yemeni leadership, under President Ali Abdullah Saleh, seems caught between what is politically necessary and what is practically advantageous for the country in terms of its relationship with Israel. As a result, Yemen has been trying to maintain a balance by attempting not to go against the trend in the Arab World on the one hand, and to not draw more pressure from the US and its allies on the other.

This approach is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain in view of negative developments in the Middle East peace process. With the Palestinians and Israelis drifting away from any final agreement, the region looks set for more years of conflict. In the Arab World, these developments are being seen as the fault of the hardline Likud-led government in Israel. Washington is keeping its distance from the peace process, based on the assumption that if close involvement as tried by the Clinton administration did not yield results, the Bush team would risk its reputation by doing the same.

However, this has created a great deal of anti-Americanism in the Arab World in particular, and the wider Islamic World in general. The repercussions of this were shown dramatically in Yemen, when suicide bombers in the port of Aden attacked the American warship USS Cole on Oct. 12, 2000. The perpetrators of the attack had links both in the Arab World and beyond, from Sudan to Pakistan.

It was a clear signal that, no matter how hard President Saleh tried to keep a pragmatic geo-political image for Yemen, opponents of the way the peace process is currently structured could change that image with one blast. Indeed, the USS Cole blast did create tensions between Sanaa and Washington although these seem to have been resolved subsequently.

Yemen is particularly vulnerable to challenges from the opponents of peace. It has an active and legal Islamic party, Al Islah, which is opposed to the peace process. While the party has tended to function co-operatively with the Saleh regime, partly because of tribal and family links (see the latest edition of RIM), it has not compromised on its views regarding the peace process.

The various tribes in Yemen tend to view the Islamist movements across the Middle East in a sympathetic light, and as such they have been known to give safe haven in tribal territories to activists from various parts of the Arab World. Yemen had acquired a reputation as a transit station for militants during the 1990s. Being in the camp of Iraq during the Gulf crisis of 1990-91, it had maintained the expected levels of anti-Israel rhetoric.

However, subsequently a more pragmatic outlook began to emerge as Sanaa recognised the need to keep good links with the US. It is important to note that there are no real challenges to peace emanating from Yemen as a state. The Islamic activists who can create a nuisance are mostly externally inspired (see below). Within Yemen, political stability has been achieved in recent years through a co-operative relationship between the two major political groupings, i.e. the GPC and Al Islah. Given the amount of political capital that both groups have invested in the current ruling superstructure, there is not much likelihood that they will tolerate any measure that could lead to instability and backsliding on the economic front.

This means there will be no direct challenge to the peace process from the Yemeni government, or even from Islamist groups within the country like Al Islah. Sanaa will not move towards closer relations with Israel so long as a hardliner like Sharon remains in power, but it is also prudent enough not to jeopardise its own interests with actions that may backfire. The regime has become cautious in taking geo-political positions since the policy fiasco during the Gulf crisis.