The Jerusalem Post Ungkap Pertemuan Rahasia RI – Israel | Bahas Normalisasi Tel Aviv dan Jakarta Hingga Pilpres 2024 | OBROLANBISNIS.com — Menteri Pertahanan RI, Prabowo Subianto, disebut surat kabar Israel The Jerusalem Post berupaya mendorong normalisasi hubungan kerjasama bilateral Indonesia dengan Israel.
The Jerusalem Post dalam laporannya yang bertajuk “How agriculture led Indonesia’s defense minister to talk normalization with Israel” pada 11 Januari 2022, memaparkan adanya serangkaian pertemuan, pernyataan dan laporan dalam beberapa bulan terakhir di tahun 2021, menunjukkan relasi antara Israel dan Indonesia terus menguat.
Indonesia dan Israel tidak memiliki hubungan diplomatik secara resmi. Namun, koran tersebut menyebutkan bahwa Jakarta dan Tel Aviv memiliki kerjasama di sektor agrikultur (pertanian), perdagangan dan pariwisata.
Isu upaya normalisasi hubungan Indonesia dan Israel menjadi sorotan publik pascapertemuan antara Prabowo dengan Penasihat Keamanan Nasional Israel, Eyal Hulata, dalam sebuah acara konferensi internasional di Manama, Bahrain, pada November 2021 lalu.
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Dari sejumlah foto yang beredar di media sosial, Prabowo terlihat berbicara dengan diplomat kuasa usaha ad interim Israel di Bahrain, Itay Tagner, pada acara yang sama.
Terkait hal itu, Prabowo lantas mengeluarkan pernyataan, bahwa tidak ada larangan atau pelanggaran baginya untuk berbicara dengan pejabat Israel dalam kapasitasnya mewakili kepentingan nasional.
Sebagaimana diketahui, Prabowo Subianto dan dunia pertanian memang cukup dekat. Prabowo pernah menjadi Ketua Umum Himpunan Kerukunan Tani Indonesia (HKTI) dan belakangan juga mendapat tugas dari Presiden Jokowi membangun lumbung pangan (food estate) Indonesia.
Sementara baru-baru ini, Menlu AS, Antony Blinken dan Menlu RI Retno Marsudi, disebut membicarakan normalisasi Indonesia-Israel saat bertemu di Jakarta, dan pihak Israel disebut mengetahui pembicaraan AS dengan RI tersebut.
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Sejumlah sumber juga menyebutkan, pejabat RI dan Israel telah menggelar beberapa pertemuan rahasia dalam beberapa waktu terakhir.
“Prosesnya panjang,” kata seorang pejabat sebagaimana dikutip The Jerussalem Post. “Ada satu pertemuan dilanjutkan yang lain dan rencana-rencana serta sejumlah persoalan yang menyertainya, dan lantas, pada suatu hari itu (akan) terjadi,” paparnya menambahkan.
Beberapa pertemuan rahasia RI-Israel itu pun kabarnya sebagian besar berfokus pada kerjasama pertanian.
Menurut Shmuel Friedman, konsultan pertanian, pengusaha dan penasihat senior mantan Menteri Pertanian Israel Yair Shamir, yang telah bekerja di sebuah pusat Research & Development pertanian di Indonesia, salah satu mitra yang terlibat dalam proyek itu adalah Prabowo Subianto.
“Ketahanan pangan suatu bangsa tak kalah pentingnya dengan ketahanan nasional itu sendiri. Dan (Prabowo) sangat setuju dengan saya soal itu,” kata Friedman pekan ini.
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“Itulah yang kami tahu (bagaimana mengelola pertanian dan ketahanan pangan). Pada akhirnya, kami perlihatkan hasilnya dan membuat para petani puas (dengan hasilnya), jadi seharusnya tidak masalah dari mana asalnya,” sambungnya.
Friedman mengaku, mengetahui pembicaraan normalisasi antara Tel Aviv dan Jakarta, tapi dirinya tidak terlibat di dalam politiknya.
“Saya percaya bahwa hubungan antar negara perlu dimulai dari sana, dari ketahanan pangan. Bukan dengan senjata, (tapi) dengan makanan,” katanya.
The Jerusalem Post juga menulis bahwa Prabowo memanfaatkan isu normalisasi hubungan dengan Israel demi mencari dukungan dari AS terkait rencananya mencalonkan diri lagi dalam pemilihan Presiden 2024.
Seperti banyak pemimpin negara mayoritas Muslim lain yang mengincar hubungan dengan Israel, sebut seorang sumber anonim, Prabowo disebut memandang Tel Aviv sebagai “kunci” atau “jalur penghubung” utama dalam kerangka menjalin hubungan yang lebih baik dengan AS, karena Israel merupakan sekutu terdekat AS.
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Salah satu rekan bisnis Friedman adalah Joey Allaham, seorang pengusaha asal Damaskus, Suriah, yang berbasis di New York. Allaham disebut telah membantu memfasilitasi kerjasama Friedman dan Prabowo.
Pada Oktober 2020, tulis The Jerusalem Post, Allaham dan Menteri Koordinator Kelautan dan Investasi (Menko Marves) RI Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan menyumbangkan 15.000 unit Taffix, semprotan hidung anti-Covid-19 buatan Israel, kepada petugas kesehatan dan personel militer Indonesia.
Allaham mulai bekerja mengurus hubungan Israel-Indonesia pada awal 2021. Dia mengurusi sejumlah bidang mulai dari perdagangan, pertanian hingga diplomasi.
Ia juga menginisiasi pertemuan antara asisten pribadi Prabowo, Sudaryono dengan seorang agen intelijen Israel di Budapest, Rumania, Mei 2021 lalu, melalui kontak bisnis yang merupakan mantan perwira senior intelijen tentara Israel.
Dari sini, Israel dan Indonesia disebut terus merapat ke hubungan tingkat yang lebih tinggi, termasuk dalam pertemuan di Paris.
Staf Khusus Prabowo Subianto, Dahnil Simanjuntak membantah pemberitaan media Israel itu ketika dimintai komentarnya.
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Dahnil menegaskan, Prabowo tidak pernah terlibat dalam pembahasan normalisasi hubungan kerjasama antara Jakarta dengan Tel Aviv.
“Pak Menhan tidak pernah ikut membahas masalah normalisasi dengan Israel, baik secara formal maupun informal,” kata Dahnil melalui pesan tertulis pada Jumat, 14 Januari 2022.
Dahnil menegaskan, sikap Prabowo selama ini sejalan dengan negara dan konstitusi Indonesia yakni mendukung kemerdekaan Palestina.
“Sikap beliau sejalan dengan sikap negara dan konstitusi kita mendukung kemerdekaan semua bangsa, dalam hal ini kemerdekaan Palestina dan mendukung penyelesaian two state solution, seperti yang sudah disampaikan secara terbuka pada forum Manama, di Bahrain,” papar Dahnil.
Dahnil juga menekankan, tulisan The Jerusalem Post soal pertemuan Sudaryono dengan pejabat Israel tak benar.
Sedangkan Wakil Ketua Umum Bidang Luar Negeri sekaligus Wakil Ketua Dewan Pembina Partai Gerindra, Fadli Zon, melontarkan bantahannya melalui akun resmi twitternya @fadlizon pada 14 Januari 2022, dengan kalimat singkat “propaganda murahan Israel dari dulu ya seperti ini. Fitnah dan hoax”. ***
The Jerusalem Post Reveals Secret RI-Israel Meeting | Discuss Normalization of Tel Aviv and Jakarta Until 2024 Presidential Election | OBROLANBISNIS.com — The Minister of Defense of the Republic of Indonesia, Prabowo Subianto, said that the Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post is trying to encourage the normalization of bilateral relations between Indonesia and Israel.
The Jerusalem Post in its report entitled “How agriculture led Indonesia’s defense minister to talk normalization with Israel” on January 11, 2022, described a series of meetings, statements and reports in the last few months in 2021, showing that relations between Israel and Indonesia continue to strengthen.
Indonesia and Israel do not have formal diplomatic relations. However, the newspaper stated that Jakarta and Tel Aviv have cooperation in the agriculture, trade and tourism sectors.
The issue of efforts to normalize relations between Indonesia and Israel has become a public spotlight after Prabowo’s meeting with Israel’s National Security Advisor, Eyal Hulata, at an international conference in Manama, Bahrain, last November 2021.
From a number of photos circulating on social media, Prabowo can be seen talking to the diplomat of Israel’s ad interim chargeee in Bahrain, Itay Tagner, at the same event.
In this regard, Prabowo then issued a statement that there was no prohibition or violation for him to speak with Israeli officials in his capacity to represent the national interest.
As is known, Prabowo Subianto and the agricultural world are indeed quite close. Prabowo was once the General Chair of the Indonesian Farmers’ Association (HKTI) and recently received the task of President Jokowi to build an Indonesian food estate.
Meanwhile, recently, the US Foreign Minister, Antony Blinken and Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi, were said to have discussed the normalization of Indonesia-Israel during a meeting in Jakarta, and the Israeli side was said to be aware of the US-Indonesian talks.
A number of sources also said that Indonesian and Israeli officials had held several secret meetings in recent times.
“It’s a long process,” one official was quoted as saying by The Jerusalem Post. “There was one meeting followed by another and the plans and a number of issues that accompanied it, and then, one day it (will) happen,” he added.
Some of the secret RI-Israel meetings were reportedly mostly focused on agricultural cooperation.
According to Shmuel Friedman, agricultural consultant, entrepreneur and senior adviser to former Israeli Agriculture Minister Yair Shamir, who has worked at an agricultural Research & Development center in Indonesia, one of the partners involved in the project is Prabowo Subianto.
“Food security of a nation is no less important than national security itself. And (Prabowo) totally agrees with me on that,” Friedman said this week.
“That’s what we know (how to manage agriculture and food security). In the end, we show the results and make the farmers satisfied (with the results), so it shouldn’t matter where it comes from,” he continued.
Friedman admitted that he was aware of the normalization talks between Tel Aviv and Jakarta, but he was not involved in the politics.
“I believe that relations between countries need to start from there, from food security. Not with weapons, (but) with food,” he said.
The Jerusalem Post also wrote that Prabowo used the issue of normalizing relations with Israel to seek support from the US regarding his plan to run again in the 2024 presidential election.
Like many leaders of Muslim-majority countries who are eyeing relations with Israel, said an anonymous source, Prabowo is said to view Tel Aviv as the main “key” or “connection line” in terms of establishing better relations with the US, as Israel is the closest US ally.
One of Friedman’s business partners is Joey Allaham, a businessman from Damascus, Syria, based in New York. Allaham is said to have helped facilitate the cooperation between Friedman and Prabowo.
In October 2020, wrote The Jerusalem Post, Allaham and Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment (Menko Marves) Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan donated 15,000 units of Taffix, an Israeli-made anti-Covid-19 nasal spray, to Indonesian health workers and military personnel.
Allaham started working on Israel-Indonesia relations in early 2021. He is in charge of a number of fields, from trade, agriculture to diplomacy.
He also initiated a meeting between Prabowo’s personal assistant, Sudaryono, and an Israeli intelligence agent in Budapest, Romania, last May 2021, through a business contact who is a former senior Israeli army intelligence officer.
From here, Israel and Indonesia are said to continue to move closer to higher-level relations, including the meeting in Paris.
Prabowo Subianto’s Special Staff, Dahnil Simanjuntak, denied the Israeli media reports when asked for comments.
Dahnil emphasized that Prabowo had never been involved in the discussion of normalizing cooperative relations between Jakarta and Tel Aviv.
“The Minister of Defense has never participated in discussing normalization issues with Israel, both formally and informally,” said Dahnil in a written message on Friday, January 14, 2022.
Dahnil emphasized that Prabowo’s attitude had been in line with the state and the Indonesian constitution, namely supporting the independence of Palestine.
“His attitude is in line with the attitude of our state and constitution to support the independence of all nations, in this case the independence of Palestine and to support the completion of a two-state solution, as has been publicly stated at the Manama forum, in Bahrain,” said Dahnil.
Dahnil also emphasized that The Jerusalem Post’s article about Sudaryono’s meeting with Israeli officials was not true.
Meanwhile, the Deputy General Chair for Foreign Affairs as well as the Deputy Chairperson of the Guidance Council for the Gerindra Party, Fadli Zon, made his rebuttal through his official Twitter account @fadlizon on January 14, 2022, with the short sentence “Israel’s cheap propaganda has always been like this. Slander and hoax”. ***
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