YEMEN - Yemen-Israel Linkages.

Despite the tensions on the Arab-Israeli front, there have been persistent rumours and reports of discreet meetings between Yemeni and Israeli officials, of discreet visits to Yemen by Israeli Jews of Yemeni origin, of liaison activities between the US and Yemen with Israel being the main subject, etc. Most observers believe that such contacts and linkages existed during the 1990s and continue to exist. But they also maintain that such contacts will not yield any concrete results until the Arab-Israeli confrontation is ended in a mutually satisfactory way.

Ironically, first credible reports of a rapprochement between the two countries began to emerge in 1996, two years after the end of the North-South war. It was also the same year that Likud hardliner Binyamin Netanyahu came to power in Israel, effectively damaging the peace process in a way that it has yet to recover. By 1997, reports from Jerusalem were indicating that Israeli and Yemeni officials are discussing the establishment of "interest offices" in each other's countries as a first step toward establishing official ties. Foreign Minister David Levy in late March 1997 confirmed reports that the director general of Israel's Foreign Ministry, Eitan Ben Tsur, had met in Europe with Yemen's then foreign minister Abdel Karim Al Iryani.

Further confirmation came from Yemen, where President Saleh told reporters that Sanaa supported the normalisation of ties with Israel and that contacts were under way. The daily 'Yedioth Aharanot' reported on May 28, 1997 that, as a first step toward expanded ties, Yemeni officials would allow up to 10,000 Israelis of Yemeni background to visit Yemen and allow Israeli companies to invest in Yemen. Discreet visits were subsequently allowed, but any rumours of real political rapprochement were refuted.

In April 1999, there was a report that Iryani, by then premier of Yemen, had met with the director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Reportedly, the meeting once again focused on visits, refugees and Israeli investments. But this was denied strongly by Sanaa. In June 1999, a Yemeni government official denied a report by the Israeli daily 'Maariv' that Yemen was intending to normalize its relations with Israel. The 'Maariv' report was described as "fabricated, and baseless in spirit and content". The Yemeni government issued its standard disclaimer that it had no intention or any desire to have any ties with Israel, whatever the conditions and nature of this contact, before Israel complied with the requirements for a just and comprehensive peace and its complete withdrawal from the Arab territories occupied in 1967.

Yet the rumours persisted, with the emphasis being that Israel was trying to woo Yemen. In January 2000, the Jordanian 'Al Majd' newspaper said, quoting well-informed diplomatic sources in Amman, that the Israeli embassy in the Jordanian had tried repeatedly to contact the Yemeni ambassador in Amman, Hassan Al Louzi, by telephone. In the same month, in a statement to the Kuwaiti daily 'Al Seyasah' , the then Yemeni foreign minister Abdel Qader Bajammal said that all attempts made by Israel to use time to serve its interests in making a peace deal are doomed to failure. In March the Israeli airline, El Al, asked permission to use Yemeni airspace for its flights to the Far East but this was refused.

Yet in early April 2000, Israeli papers reported that in late March a group of 12 Israeli Jews of Yemeni origin - six of them rabbis - ate kosher food and toured synagogues in Yemen during a tour. 'The Jerusalem Post' on April 3 published a photograph of Moshe Hananel, a tourism investor who organized the 4-day trip that ended on March 31, asking for directions in Sanaa. As part of its boycott of Israel, Yemen does not allow visitors to enter with an Israeli passport or with an Israeli visa stamp in a third country's passport. But Hananel said Yemen issued them special travel documents so they would not need to use Israeli passports.

Saleh said in remarks published on April 2 that Yemen welcomed visits by any Jews of Yemeni descent, including Israeli Jews, but such openness did not indicate a normalizing of ties with Israel. On May 8, Yemen's top religious leaders issued an edict (fatwa) banning the normalisation of relations with Israel in an apparent reaction to the visits. 'Yemen Observer' weekly quoted Deputy Mufti of Yemen Hamoud Abbas Al Moayed as saying: "Any involvement with the Israelis is prohibited while they are at war with the Palestinians and occupying their territories". He said the fatwa also stipulated that all Muslims, including rulers and officials, should be aware of the dangers of "involvement with Jews" and of "their cunning plans". The paper said more than 20 Yemeni religious leaders, including Mufti Sheikh Ahmed Zabarra - who is the country's top religious leader - had signed the fatwa.

The Islah party had in early May also condemned the government for allowing Jews to visit Yemen, saying those who left the Arab state for Israel were enemies. It said the decision to allow Jewish visits amounted to normalisation of relations with Israel. The government defended its decision to allow the visits, but became much more cautious. In September 2000 Bajammal denied statements made by Israeli officials that contacts were being made with Yemen and described these statements as Israeli political blackmail.

Yet, in January 2001, the ruling General People's Congress of President Saleh placed a Yemeni Jewish citizen on the slate for parliamentary elections for the first time. The candidate, Ibrahim Ezer, was reportedly recommended by Saleh himself as a gesture to the incoming Bush administration in a bid to receive economic aid for Yemen. The General Election Committee, however, subsequently rejected Ezer's application on grounds that a candidate must be the child of two Muslim parents.

Most of the 45,000-member Jewish community in Yemen went to Israel in an airlift - codenamed Operation Magic Carpet - beginning in 1949 soon after the Jewish state was founded and continuing in the 1950s. About 151,000 Israelis are Yemeni-born or first generation, according to the 1998 figures of the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics. Official Yemeni estimates have put the number of Jews now living in the Gulf Arab state at about 600.