Joseph and Michelle Muscat have gone to Israel, to tick Netanyahu off their list of ‘people with whom we must be photographed in the next five years’ so as to fill enough frejms tal-fidda on the fajerplejs tal-gass for the next 50 years. It is really extraordinary how, when our prime minister is photographed meeting important male personages for the first time, his facial expression and body language are those of those of some man in a social encounter with Sophia Loren circa 1956: face all lit up in star-struck, twinkling-eyes flirtation. The other man, meanwhile, adopts an attitude of patronising tolerance and civility, as Loren would have with yet another clunking redneck queued up to charm her.
The government-release photograph taken at the Yitzhak Rabin Memorial is particularly awkward. The Maltese delegation actually looks more than usually peculiar – the normal assortment of garden gnomes and trolls-at-the-bread-and-pasta-trough, but this time with key added features. There’s the prime minister, trying to look serious and grave, but not knowing quite how to simulate it, trying his trademark vertical furrow and seriously let down by his awkward ‘Phil Mitchell from Eastenders’ way of holding himself. There’s Karmenu Vella, there to rack up the Israeli tourism numbers, looking as though somebody has put him through the 90C wash and a long spin, only to have him come shrunken by several sizes, so that his trousers hang and pool over his shoes.
There’s Joe Mifsud, the lost sheep returned to the Labour fold (because it’s so much more convenient when they’re in power), after five years of sulking and fuming because Alex Sceberras Trigona was made party international secretary when he wanted that post for himself. Why is he part of the delegation to Israel? Because he’s a self-proclaimed expert on the Palestinian cause, the Occupied Territories and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). He loves that stuff, so they included him – no doubt bhala konsulent, albeit one who has not been blacklisted by the World Bank or fired by the European Commission. Joe Mifsud is caught standing like a wallaby, with his paws hanging in front of him. Then there’s Charles Buhagiar, taken along because miskin, he deserves a nice treat, adding to the ‘Are all Maltese men really so unprepossessing, squat, ugly, slouchy and badly dressed’ effect with his magnificent facial hair and bad suit.
That’s the physical impression. The rest is not much better. Muscat told Netanyahu that Malta and Israel “have to work together as neighbours”. But Malta and Israel are not neighbours. We are in geographically (and culturally) separate parts of the Mediterranean. If Malta and Israel work together, it should not be the political equivalent of a yard barbecue with the family next door, but because it is in the interests of both to do so. “There are many things both our countries can do together,” Muscat said, making it sound like an indecent proposition. Yes, there are, but they are mainly related to Israeli expertise in dealing with the rigours of a semi-arid climate. That has to do with geography, but not with neighbourliness.
“There is huge room for synergy between both countries, and although our closeness to North Africa may be politically sensitive, I have witnessed a willingness in Israel to reach out to markets in the Arab world. This is where I believe the greatest area of synergy exists,” Muscat told the press. I don’t quite know what to make of that. What is the prime minister saying here – that because Israel wants to sell to Arab states (of course Israel does – nobody refuses a sale in these straitened times), then he assumes those Arab states will want to buy? Buyers and sellers are not in the same position. Sellers sell to everyone; buyers have choices and they use them. Why would Arab states choose to buy from Israel when they can buy from anywhere else? Trade as peace? Hardly that.
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It looks like our Homeland Security Minister is something of a trend-setter. It was reported yesterday that €100,000 in cash were stolen from a Mellieha flat, burgled while the owners were out. The owners are described as “a man, 49, and his wife, 27”. Fortunately, their losses were restricted to the cash: unlike the Homeland Security Minister, they own no collection of Faberge eggs.
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