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Israel's Relations with Turkey and Egypt

(NPR) Interview with Dore Gold - Former Israeli UN ambassador Dore Gold, an advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu, told NPR's "Talk of the Nation" on Tuesday: "There's a tendency to put together Turkey, Egypt and what's going to happen at the United Nations....[But] the whole phenomenon of Turkey's policy is something that's been developing for a number of years. You know, in 2006, after the Palestinian elections, Prime Minister Erdogan surprised the world and invited Khalid Meshal, the political head of the Hamas from Damascus, to come to Ankara....In fact, Erdogan's government warmed up to the entire network of the Muslim Brotherhood so that what you had from 2006 until the famous Turkish flotilla were repeated conferences of the Muslim Brotherhood from all over the Middle East in Turkey....So there's something going on that's much more fundamental than the whole issue of the Turkish flotilla." "With respect to Egypt...the Egyptians are disturbed by the attack on the Israeli embassy. The Egyptian government is disturbed by the rise of al-Qaeda and other terrorist cells in Sinai and have a joint interest with Israel in stabilizing the situation there. So it's very different from Turkey, and hopefully we can build, quietly, in our contacts with the Egyptians, cooperative relations to help deal with this problem."
2011-09-14 00:00:00
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